Friday, August 15, 2008
During a press conference in Palo Alto, California, hunters of the mythical creature Bigfoot claimed to have found a corpse of the creature. Matt Whitton and Rick Dyer say that they were hunting for the creature in the forests of Northeastern Georgia in the United States when they came across the corpse of one of the alleged animals.
After finding the body, Whitton and Dyer allegedly took it home, where it is currently being stored in a freezer. Despite the possibility of the historic find, they will not say where they found the body.
“We have no intentions of revealing the location. We want to protect this [creature],” stated Whitton during the press conference. He also mentioned that an autopsy is going to be conducted on the body.
The two men had earlier claimed that DNA evidence, photos and video would be presented during the conference, but only one photo was shown. Whitton states that all evidence will be provided once the autopsy, scheduled for next week, is completed.
The single photo shown at the conference portrays a blurred black figure in the distance. Whitton claims the creature was walking “parallel” to them as they hauled out the corpse. Another photo on Whitton’s website www.searchingforbigfoot.com shows what is allegedly the corpse, decapitated and stuffed into a freezer.
Tom Biscardi, founder of the Great American Bigfoot Research Organization, joined Whitton and Dyer at the press conference. Biscardi has previously been caught in a hoax. In 2005, his organization claimed to have caught a live male Bigfoot.
Science website LiveScience, run by Imaginova, openly speculates that this is a hoax because of the involvement of Biscardi. It theorizes that this may be a marketing scheme to promote an upcoming film by Biscardi, entitled Bigfoot Lives.
At least one other person states that the group’s pronouncement is a hoax. Jerry Parrino, owner of TheHorrorDome.com, a website that sells Halloween costumes, was quoted as saying to Fox News that the photo appeared to resemble a costume that is being sold on his site.
“It definitely looks like our costume. This body has little to do with Bigfoot and everything to do with a Sasquatch costume that someone developed,” stated Parrino.
Despite the claim, the Fish and Wildlife Reserve refuses to investigate the alleged discovery because it does not appear on an endangered species list in either the state of Georgia or the U.S..