Hoax Bigfoot: Abandoned In Shed
Posted by: Loren Coleman on December 2nd, 2008
Remember that Georgia Bigfoot hoax? The melodrama just won’t go away. But mildew, literally, may be setting in, if not mold.
About a month ago, Cryptomundo broke the story here that the eBay bidding for a quarter million dollars was a hoax. Now, comes a followup to that from Georgia.
The bogus Bigfoot body, the rubber suit used in a big hoax, has been abandoned in an anonymous, Indiana storage shed, according to Daniel Silliman of the Clayton Daily News.
An attempt to sell it on eBay, as a potential tourist attraction, has failed.
The winning bidder, offering $250,000 for the “Bigfoot Hoax & Body Display,” turned out to be a fraud, according to Joshua P. Warren, the North Carolina hoax investigator who was selling the costume.
The winning bidder used a “snipping program,” and didn’t have any intention of paying up at the end of the auction. Other, legitimate bidders, given a second chance to purchase the hoax body, backed out, Warren said.
“This auction coincided perfectly with the international economic crisis,” Warren said. “There were lots of legit bidders, but when I went back to them and said, ‘Are you still interested,’ they were all having second thoughts about it.”
(The Unholy Trinity: Rick Dyer, Tom Biscardi, Matt Whitton.)
Warren was acting as a middleman, in his attempt to auction off the artifact from what has been said to be the Bigfoot hoax of the century. The sale would have refunded an Indiana businessman who invested $50,000 into what he was told was an actual Bigfoot body. It also may have cleared two of the hoaxers, former Clayton County Police Officer Matthew Whitton and former corrections officer Rick Dyer. The Indiana man, William Lett, has threatened to press charges and sue the two Clayton County men, though his financial arrangements were with the third hoaxer, “Bigfoot find” promoter Tom Biscardi.
According to a police report filed by Lett, Biscardi asked for a $50,000 loan and promised to pay Lett $75,000 in 90 days. Lett drove down from Indiana with a trailer, met Dyer and Whitton in the Clayton County Courthouse parking lot, late at night, and paid them $50,000 in cash for what turned out to be a frozen costume stuffed with animal parts.
The Clayton County men’s claims to have the corpse of the legendary man-ape captured international attention, with the help of Biscardi’s media savvy. The hoax fell apart in about a week, though, when some of the faked evidence leaked too soon and the hoaxers didn’t come up with anything to “shock the world,” as promised.
The two Clayton men allegedly took their bundle of cash and stopped answering their cell phones, leaving Lett with a loss.
Lett told Warren he wouldn’t sue if he got his money back, and the auction could have concluded the story with a solution suited to everyone’s interests. The attempt to let the market create a solution failed, though, and it’s not clear how this will end.
“I think they’re kind of back where they started,” Warren said. “Unless something truly remarkable happens, I think we’ll see this ridiculous saga go to the courts.”
As of Monday, no lawsuit had been filed and no criminal charges were being brought. Neither Lett, nor the lawyer representing Whitton and Dyer, returned calls seeking comment on Monday.
The rubber suit, originally made as a Halloween costume, is now stashed in a shed near Eaton, Ind., not worth anything, yet too costly to just throw away.
(The costume was created by Chuck Jarman and sold widely for $499, before being discovered and used as the basis of the hoax by the Georgia guys.)
Source: Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Bigfoot hoax doesn’t sell on eBay by Daniel Silliman of the Clayton Daily News
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
They should donate the costume to the cryptozoology museum.
May all hoaxes rot in hell.
I guess it’s just a matter of semantics, but I think of this whole episode as scam rather than hoax. It might have started out as a hoax but when money becomes involved it passes from the annoying practical joke category into a crime. Regardless of the rather fantastic subject matter (Bigfoot) it should, nonetheless, be treated as an attempt to wheedle money out of people in a fraudulent manner.
“According to a police report filed by Lett, Biscardi asked for a $50,000 loan and promised to pay Lett $75,000 in 90 days. Lett drove down from Indiana with a trailer, met Dyer and Whitton in the Clayton County Courthouse parking lot, late at night, and paid them $50,000 in cash for what turned out to be a frozen costume stuffed with animal parts.”
The saying, “A fool and his money are soon parted” comes to mind.
Trash to treasure and then back to trash…
or was it just trash all along? :p
I wonder, are the former hoaxers working at a food court? Trying not to get hit with tomatos at a renaissance fair, or simply living in a lean-to and eating pinecones in a forest somewhere… The search continues!
What is wrong with people anymore? Does anyone have any morals anymore? It’s no wonder there are so many skeptics out there, because there are so many lying cheating idiots out there. I think anyone who makes up a hoax like that should be thrown in jail. I bet there would be a lot less hoaxes then. I have been hunting bigfoot for many years. I have seen them and I have seen lots of evidence to prove their exsistence. It angers me that people get away with this; it makes it very hard for people like me that are out there doing all they can to find these creatures. Someday someone will find a body and prove once and for alll that they are real. I hope to be the person to shut up all the skeptics.
I’ve just been to seen the stills from the flyer in slightly more detail and actually, compared to some previous efforts, (including their own), they make a pretty fair fist of it.
But they do so by basing the costume on fur attached to a fabric somewhat akin to nylon mesh, which enables Hieronymous’ actual muscularity to ‘shine’ through, thus reproducing, somewhat the bulging muscle effect so blatantly apparent in the original.
But to achieve that they’ve had to totally discredit all Morris’ previous claims as to what the original suit was made from, not to mention totally demolished Hieronymous’ claims to be the suit’s wearer because the present suit heavily relies on Hieronymous’ present physique (ropey muscles protruding through a generally aged and corpulent frame), thus instantly discrediting the possibility the youthful Hieronymous of yesteryear could’ve ‘filled’ a similar suit made back then.
It’d be necessary to see Morris’ suit moving on film before any meaningful comparison with Patty’s ‘suit’ could be made, though.