Clayton County Police Chief Jeff Turner has “moved to have [Matthew] Whitton fired,” according to breaking news from Atlanta’s CBS 46 News, posted at 4:29 pm EDT August 19, 2008.
SearchingforBigfoot.com owner Tom Biscardi had paid an “undisclosed sum” — Internet rumors put it at $50,000 — to Georgia residents Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer for their frozen “corpse” and the privilege of trotting them, but not the body, out in front of TV cameras.
…[and]
Loren Coleman, who runs the influential Cryptomundo.com Web site devoted to mysterious animals, isn’t buying Biscardi’s pleas of ignorance.
“He’s a huckster, a circus ringmaster,” Coleman told FoxNews.com. “It’s all about money with him. It probably didn’t matter to him whether it was real or not.”
So why would Dyer, described as a former security guard, and Whitton, a police officer with the Clayton County, Ga., department, make it all up?
“They probably started out small, as a way to promote their Bigfoot tracking business, and got in way over their heads,” Coleman figured. “These are not very intelligent individuals.”
The involvement of Biscardi, who Coleman says was introduced to the pair by Kulls, brought them attention they didn’t need.
“In a way, both sides may have been trying to out-con each other,” said Coleman.
The Bigfoot Field Research Organization, another Bigfoot group that refused to take seriously what Coleman dubbed the “Georgia gorilla,” wants everyone connected with the “body” — Biscardi, Dyer, Kulls and Whitton — arrested.
“Warrants need to be issued immediately before Biscardi leaves the country,” the organization’s Web site states.
As for Whitton, he doesn’t seem to have a job to come back to in Georgia.
Asked for comment on Officer Whitton, Clayton County, Ga., Chief of Police Jeffrey Turner, corrected FoxNews.com. “You mean ex-officer Whitton.”
“As soon as we saw it was a hoax,” Chief Turner explained, “I filed the paperwork to terminate his employment.”
Turner said he hasn’t heard from Whitton, and that he was mystified at the former officer’s involvement in such a blatant scam.
“He was a real go-getter,” Turner said, citing Whitton’s wounding in the line of duty earlier this summer while apprehending a suspect who had allegedly shot a woman in the head. “For someone to do a complete three-sixty like that, I can’t explain it.”
The woman who answered the phone at Biscardi’s Searching for Bigfoot office in Menlo Park, Calif., said he was out ill but would return calls when he could.
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.
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