Byrne: Marx/Biscardi Bigfoot Photo Hoax

Has anyone noticed that Tom Biscardi is still using the Ivan Marx film clips discredited by Peter Byrne in 1971?

Perhaps people have failed to even look at the frames from the 1970s’ films? Or read their history?

The notorious alleged 1970s Bigfoot trickster and Ivan Marx associate, who attempted to pull off the “send in your money and see the Bigfoot I’ve captured” trickery on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory, may be in a neighborhood near you. Old news, right?

Rapidly having departed Happy Valley, California, and disassociated from past associates in Las Vegas, Tom Biscardi has taken his show on the road. Old news, right?

But why have the media and local media especially, noticed what has happened on the Biscardi roadtrip in the last two years? Why haven’t the local media ignored what happened 30 years ago? Is the news that slow?

Was anyone listening when Happy Camper blogger Linda Martin noted who was coming to dinner? A supporter in 2005, Martin gave background insights into the team: “…the Great American Bigfoot Research Organization visited Happy Camp…The team included world-famous researcher Tom Biscardi, Joan Brandt, Peggy Marx, Lee Hickman, Tim McMillen and Rob Shorey. Peggy Marx is the widow of Ivan Marx, pre-eminent Bigfoot researcher of the 1950’s through the 1990’s….Tom Biscardi moved from New York to California to help Ivan and Peggy Marx look for Bigfoot soon after seeing the Patterson Bigfoot film in 1967….Biscardi and [Peggy] Marx founded the Great American Bigfoot Research Organization…The team includes an expert tracker, Lee Hickman, grandson of Ivan Marx. He is able to track anything through the woods within two weeks of the passing. He was trained by his famous grandfather in this and other Bigfoot research skills.”

Ivan Marx is now being recast as a “pre-eminent Bigfoot researcher of the 1950’s through the 1990’s”? Tom Biscardi as a “world-famous Bigfoot researcher”? Ask the people in Happy Camp if they are happy today. Ivan Marx has been written about in many books as an alleged hoaxer and prankster.

As Craig Woolheater noted last year here, Biscardi would go on to sue the Great American Bigfoot Research Organization, its president and vice president, for over $200,000. Biscardi said they owed him that to “lend his experience, knowledge and reputation,” to conduct “Bigfoot expeditions,” and to provide the group with use of his library — which consists of “things such as plaster footprint casts, films, photos and sound recordings.” The group, the lawsuit claims, paid him only $65,000.

Only $65,000. You know what most of us could do with that kind of money? Can you imagine? What were the contributors thinking?

It really is a shame that people who find Biscardi at their doorstep asking questions about Bigfoot don’t merely look at the past.

What did Peter Byrne say he discovered in 1971 (see below)? Perhaps people need to learn from history so they will not repeat it?

Loren Coleman 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.

Email • Facebook • Twitter •