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Long After the Shark Died, the Rumor Lived

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January 9, 2002, Section A, Page 14Buy Reprints
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That is how long it took, and how easy it was, to spread the rumor that shrouded an act of heroism.

The truth was remarkable. In July, Jessie Arbogast, an 8-year-old boy from Ocean Springs, Miss., was attacked by a 7-foot, 200-pound bull shark in the shallows of the Gulf of Mexico near Pensacola. The shark bit off Jessie's arm and was still tearing at him when his uncle, Vance Flosenzier, waded up to the shark and grabbed its tail.

He dragged the shark onto the sand, Jessie's arm still in its gullet. Surgeons reattached the boy's arm, but there was such tremendous blood loss that the boy slipped into a coma. Meanwhile, accounts of his uncle's bravery ran all over the world, on front pages and on network news, a story of terror, tragedy and bravery.

Then, by e-mail, another story spread.

''The uncle that wrestled the shark ashore was fishing for sharks, had it on a line and had been fighting it for two hours plus,'' read one version of an e-mail message that claimed to provide the truth about the incident.

In the message, which was first circulated just days after the incident, the anonymous writer claimed that Mr. Flosenzier had chummed the water to attract sharks and that Jessie was bitten when he ran into the surf ''in jubilation'' to help drag the hooked shark to shore.

''Baseless,'' said George H. Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Mr. Burgess helped investigate the incident and found no evidence that the boy's uncle had been shark fishing on the beach, part of the Gulf Island National Seashore.

That did not stop the rumor from spreading. Versions of the e-mail message, which were distributed around the world and still trickle into computers more than six months after the attack, may never disappear from computer screens -- or from minds.

''It was shameful,'' Mr. Burgess said of the person who wrote the message. Human behavior, in this case, baffled him. ''It was beyond cruel. It was gutless.''

Investigators tried to trace the e-mail message back to the person who wrote it, said Nina Kelson, a spokeswoman at the Gulf Island National Seashore. ''We were not able to find the source,'' Ms. Kelson said.

People linked to the earliest exchanges of the message, identified by investigators and rooted out by reporters, said they did not know its source and only passed it on. The incredible nature of the incident -- of a man wrestling a big bull shark to shore -- cast doubt on it, said people here on the coast. The e-mail account ''seemed reasonable,'' said Eddie Stewart, who owns a cellular telephone store in Gulf Breeze and has lived on the coast all his life.

''It made sense to me that they could have been doing that,'' he said, referring to shark fishing. He passed the e-mail message on to four other people.

As the message circulated, Jessie slowly improved. His reattached arm and a badly cut leg healed, and he gradually resurfaced from the coma. Doctors said the boy would probably be left with cognitive defects -- from the blood loss to the brain caused by his wounds.

Neither Jessie's immediate family nor Mr. Flosenzier, an engineer, have talked about the events at all. But another uncle, Joe Boney, said that Jessie was getting better. ''He's doing wonderful,'' said Mr. Boney, a battalion chief in the Biloxi Fire Department. ''He can move his arms and legs and he's standing up pretty well, with help. He knows who you are and what you're saying. He says a couple of words here and there.''

Mr. Boney said the family had tried to ignore the e-mail rumor. ''The family knows what happened,'' he said. ''It's a miracle. That's all that matters.''

What investigators and people here on the gulf coasts of Florida, Alabama and Mississippi cannot understand is why someone would take the time to fabricate such a story.

It was like the schoolyard game of rumor, in which one child whispers something into the ear of a child sitting in a circle of children, who then, one by one, pass it along. Then, the last child repeats what she heard. The fun is in seeing how much the story changed along the way.

But the rumor of what happened on July 6 on a pristine white sand beach off Fort Pickens was not just an embellishment, investigators said.

It began with a nightmare scene. Jessie, his uncle and other relatives were playing on the beach, splashing, strolling, looking for shells. Jessie was in three feet of water when the shark seized him. Mr. Flosenzier, a man of more than 200 pounds who competes in marathons in Mobile, quickly grabbed the shark's tail and hauled it, thrashing, to shore.

Jessie lay still on the sand. There was almost no blood left in him. A park ranger shot the shark with a revolver, to retrieve the arm. The boy was in surgery for 11 hours.

It was front-page news, and it warmed the hearts of the people who read it. Donations poured in, to help the family. Lines formed at blood banks on the Gulf Coast. Churches held fund-raisers.

''It was phenomenal,'' said Megan MacPherson, public relations account manager at E. W. Bullock Associates in Pensacola, which has worked, free of charge, to represent Mr. Flosenzier -- and to try to set straight the rumors. ''It was optimism and support.''

Meanwhile, the e-mail message was making its rounds.

''His nephew got bit because the whole family went into the water to wrestle the fish to land,'' wrote the e-mailer. ''There is big money on a shark that size. THIS IS THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH. The press has suppressed the real truth, because they are afraid it will effect [sic] the contributions for Jessie and the uncle is so filled with guilt, he has tried to commit suicide once already. Now it all makes sense.''

A new nightmare began for the family, especially for Mr. Flosenzier, Ms. MacPherson said. None of it, not one word, is true, she said.

He had chosen not to parade his new celebrity in front of television cameras. There are no book or movie deals in his future, Ms. MacPherson said.

But his silence made some people suspicious, and made the e-mail easier to believe.

The National Park Service had found no tackle, and no other evidence that Mr. Flosenzier was fishing -- or that he ever had been. He said then that he does not fish. The ranger who shot the shark saw no hook in its mouth. The e-mailer had claimed that witnesses saw a hook in its mouth.

But the e-mail story was so widespread that the National Park Service reopened the investigation. Investigators reinterviewed witnesses, Ms. Kelson said. ''No detail was too small,'' Mr. Burgess said.

There was no evidence to support the e-mail message. The official conclusion: ''The uncle performed in a heroic way,'' Mr. Burgess said.

The Pensacola News Journal did its own investigation, found no evidence to support the e-mail account and tracked the message to several people who said they received it soon after the attack but denied having produced it. The trail seems to end at the address Studpony32@aol.com, an e-mail address that is now defunct.

On the Gulf Coast, ''I think the rumor has been put to rest,'' Ms. Kelson said.

But the message still travels.

''It's just one of those urban legends,'' Mr. Burgess said, but this time, from a stretch of white sand in the Florida Panhandle. ''Just plain nasty.''

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 14 of the National edition with the headline: Long After the Shark Died, the Rumor Lived. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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