April 11, 2007

Laverty on Bigfoot Claims of Heironimous

Here’s additional information Roger Knights obtained from Lyle Laverty:
Bob Heironimus’s Fake-Track Claim is Discredited by Filmsite Witness Lyle Laverty
In June 2005 [Roger Knights] wrote:
“It would have been irrational for Patterson to have made the footprints over a week in advance [as Bob Heironimus (BH) claimed], risking their discovery in the interim.” – Knights’ Amazon review of Long’s book
I’ve now obtained a statement from a credible witness—who was accompanied by other witnesses—that no such tracks existed at the site the day before the filming. Here are the background and details:
BH claimed Patterson & Gimlin faked the tracks well before Oct. 20, after which they returned to Yakima, and then weeks later came back to Bluff Creek to announce the filming to the press. (Based on BH’s statements in the book and on the Xzone radio show of Dec. 7, 2006, the hoax-filming occurred the Thursday two weeks and a day before the claimed filming–i.e., Oct. 5.)
BH: “They [P&G] said [right after the filming] they had to go back and make tracks.”
Long: “In other words, make fake tracks of Bigfoot at the film site?”
BH: “Yes. ‘We have to go back and make them. We’ll either do it today, or tomorrow, and we’re out of here and come home.’”
–The Making of Bigfoot, p. 350
He was more specific about the timing on Seth Shostak’s “Skeptical Sunday” radio program (archived on the Internet at http://podcast.seti.org/media/AWA_04-07-25.mp3), Aug. 1, 2004, 36 minutes into the show, wherein he stated:
“After we made the film I was told [to mail the film, etc.]. They [P&G] said in the meantime they were going to take those plaster casts that Roger had [in Gimlin’s truck] and they were going to go back up and make the tracks.”
Recently, when browsing through my files on the PG Film, I happened to notice that Forest Service timber-cruiser crew-chief Lyle Laverty was quoted as saying that he had been up Bluff Creek and gone past the filmsite just “days” before he had discovered the tracks, at which time they had not been there. An hour after I’d read that fact, I got a nudge from the back of my noggin that this quote had great significance, if it was accurate. I therefore e-mailed Mr. Laverty, who is currently the State Director for the Colorado State Parks system, and asked him:
“I recently read (but have mislaid my printout) that you said that you had come past the Patterson film site only days before you discovered the tracks there on Oct. 21, and that there were no tracks there then. I’d greatly appreciate it if you would confirm (or disconfirm) that you said that, and give me an estimate of how many days prior to Oct. 21 that might have been.”
(I now know that Laverty actually photographed the tracks on Monday Oct. 23–the next workday–based on his statement to that effect to Jeff Meldrum, quoted in Bigfoot Times, June/July 2005, p. 4, col. 2.) On July 6, 2006 he responded:
“As near as I can recall, I passed by the site on either Thursday the 19th or Friday the 20th [presumably before 1:30]. I was part of a timber sale preparation crew working in Bluff Creek the entire summer. We operated out of a portable camp at Notice Creek during the week and returned to Orleans on the weekends.”
Laverty’s observation satisfies Greg Long’s challenge (in an e-mail to Dmitri Bayanov & Ray Crowe, and cc’d to others, on May 23, 2004):
“I have PROVED that the film was shot [weeks] earlier than October 20, 1967. Regarding the BIGFOOT TRACKS, they were FAKED [just] after the filming. Prove they weren’t!!!”
Done!
Note that it’s unlikely that Patterson would have lightly changed his mind on the timing and decided to fake the tracks on his second trip down, because the whole rationale for his (supposedly) giving BH the film and the suit to transport was that Patterson needed to remain at the site an extra day to fake the tracks. He must have thought that making the tracks at that time was so important that to ensure that it was accomplished he took the otherwise-unnecessary, risky step of entrusting BH with the film and suit.
Laverty’s observation not only discredits BH’s claim, but also rules out any track-hoax scenario in which the tracks were made before the 19th. (OTOH, because Laverty and his crew didn’t discover the tracks until the 23rd, not the 21st, that would have allowed more time for hoaxers to have faked the tracks after the 20th. But that’s only a theoretical possibility. It would be a very reckless hoaxer who would have announced a filming in advance of making the tracks, because someone (e.g., one of the locals in Willow Creek, or a reporter) might have trekked to the filmsite at once, or while the tracks were being made, to check them out.)
Furthermore, the absence of tracks on the 19th rules out the possibility that a genuine film was shot days before the 20th, but was post-dated for some innocent reason. (I had put forth one version of this theory myself, in a six-page paper titled “I gotta touch it to believe it.” In it I speculated that DeAtley had told Patterson that he wanted to see the film first, to make sure it was genuine, before letting Patterson announce it to the world. I figured that DeAtley was afraid Patterson would, by naming him as a backer (as he did in the local newspaper story), implicate him in a silly-looking hoax. Dan Perez talked me out of this theory in late May 2005, but my article was accidentally published in the August 2005 issue of Bigfoot Co-op, about a year after I’d sent it to them. I’d assumed it had been rejected and forgotten, because I’d had no feedback on it, like other unprinted papers I’d sent BFC over the years.)
I should add that Long himself must have realized that BH’s tale of early-October track-faking was hard to credit, and therefore he proposed an alternative (but even crazier) scenario (his italics):
“However, if Heironimus saw the Bigfoot Jamboree banner stretched across the highway upon his entrance into Happy Camp around the time of the Labor Day weekend, then Patterson shot his film long before October 20. This earlier time would have provided plenty of time for Patterson to have the film processed by Kodak in Palo Alto. On Patterson’s second trip to Bluff Creek in mid-October, they would have pretended to look for Bigfoot for nearly a week, then after casting fake Bigfoot tracks on October 20, rushed into Willow Creek …. No one would have known that weeks before, perhaps as much as claimed seven weeks, the film had been shot, mailed, and processed. Thus, when Patterson told Heironimus at the camp after the filming that, “We have to go back and make tracks,” this statement could very well [hah!—RK] have referred to going back many weeks later, a second trip in October, to make the tracks.”
–Greg Long, The Making of Bigfoot, p. 421
Nice try. But there are six strong objections to that theory:
1. P & G would have employed different wording if they had been telling BH at the camp that they intended to leave the scene entirely and then come back to it at a later date. I.e., they’d have said, “we’ll … come back”—not “we’ll … go back.” “We’ll … go back” could only have meant they intended to return to the location they’d just left—the film site.
2. P & G wouldn’t have said, “We’ll either do it today, or tomorrow, and we’re out of here and come home” (p. 350) if they were referring to something they intended to do weeks later, on a return visit to the area.
3. BH wouldn’t have said, “After we made the film I was told [to mail the film, etc.]. They [P&G] said in the meantime [i.e., while he was mailing the film and driving home] they were going to take those plaster casts that Roger had [in Gimlin’s truck] and they were going to go back up and make the tracks.”
4. P & G wouldn’t have had those fragile plaster casts with them and spoken of using them if they hadn’t intended to fake the tracks on that trip.
5. If P & G had intended to fake the tracks weeks later, they’d have left the filmsite at the same time as BH, or only hours thereafter, in which case there’d have been no reason for them to have entrusted him with speeding the film on its way, or to have disassociated themselves with the suit. (Their remaining in possession was risky only if they’d remained around the site.)
6. And a September filming date is ruled out by the intensity of the red foliage in the film–in both the first three minutes, and in the fourth.
Long’s contention that going back today or tomorrow “could well have referred to going back many weeks later” requires him to twist the testimony of his star witness. And yet he has the immortal rind to crown it with this:
“The standards of evidence for the Bigfoot believers are extremely low. I have much higher standards, you know, like honesty and integrity.”
–Greg Long, speech to Int’l Bigfoot Society, March 27, 2004

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