Bigfoot Hoaxers Still On the Lam
Garrison Hilliard
By Paul Wagenseil
The hunt was on Wednesday for two North American forest-roaming bipeds,
last seen in Northern California, present whereabouts unknown.
Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, the Georgia men who claimed to have found a
Bigfoot body, were being sought by Tom Biscardi, whose money they
absconded with once the frozen "corpse" was revealed to be a hoax.
"We have a contract with these people," Biscardi, a former Las Vegas
promoter now based in Menlo Park, Calif., told Fox News Wednesday morning.
"We paid them the money the night before [the press conference.] ... They
didn't figure I'd have a turbo heater on that thing to thaw it out before
they left California."
Biscardi wouldn't confirm where the body was, but it apparently had been
moved from Georgia to Indiana. An Indianapolis Fox affiliate was given a
look at the "corpse" Monday by Biscardi's investigator, Steve Kulls.
Asked to confirm rumors that he'd given Dyer and Whitton a $50,000 advance
on future earnings from the bogus Bigfoot, Biscardi would say only that
"it was a substantial amount of money" numbering in the thousands which
came from unnamed "investors."
Biscardi told Fox's Megyn Kelly, who'd previously been invited to view the
specimen herself, that the rubber Halloween suit had been stuffed full of,
well, organic material.
"It was the most macabre thing you've ever seen in your life," he said.
"There's body parts of other animals in there
Asked how he could have been fooled, Biscardi argued that it was hard to
tell when the thing was encased in a block of ice.
Meanwhile, other Bigfoot hunters nationwide piled on Biscardi, noting that
he was perfectly willing to charge for photos of the "corpse" on his Web
site before Kulls determined it was fake early on Sunday morning.
"Warrants need to be issued immediately before Biscardi leaves the
country," read a manifesto posted on the Web site of the Bigfoot Field
Researchers Organization. "Santa Clara County, California, (where the
press conference was held) clearly has jurisdiction to issue the warrants,
and all the elements of fraud are present."
But Nick Muyo, a spokesman with the Santa Clara County district attorney's
office, said jurisdiction might be hard to establish.
"If Tom Biscardi files a police report in Menlo Park, it would originate
with San Mateo County," he said. "But it sounds like Santa Clara, as well
as counties in Georgia and Indiana, could also get involved."
It's possible that fraud charges could be filed against Dyer and Whitton,
as Biscardi seems to want, though it's not clear whether it'd be a
criminal or civil case.
"[Biscardi] freely gave them the money," noted Jeffrey Turner, police
chief of Clayton County, Ga., who fired Whitton as an officer Tuesday but
couldn't locate him to inform him of his termination. "It'd be a civil
matter."
Muyo said that once a police report was filed, then a criminal
investigation could be launched.
Kulls, meanwhile, whom the BFRO labeled as "a long-time member of
Biscardi's own gang," contacted Loren Coleman at Cryptomundo.com on
Tuesday to dissociate himself from Biscardi.
"At this time I am breaking any association or cooperation with Tom
Biscardi and his company," Kulls' statement read, though it also said,
"People ask me if [Biscardi] was complicit in this hoax. I honestly
believe he was not."
It may be difficult for Biscardi to claim he was defrauded, as the
"24-Hour Sighting Hotline" number posted on Dyer and Whitton's Web site,
BigfootTracker.com, asks for tips related to "leprechauns, unicorns, large
cats, dinosaurs," as well as "Jimmy Hoffa or Elvis."
As for one scientist who Biscardi said on Friday would be examining the
Bigfoot body? He told a news network he'd never been contacted.
Stanford University anthropologist Richard Klein said he was "sorry that
my name and Stanford's name have been brought into this."
Alan Kellogg
Biscardi was in on it. He knew it was fake to begin with, and he set
up the corpse using a head from one of his costumes plus other items.
I doubt the thing was ever frozen to begin with. The three are lying.
They were lying from the beginning, and they're lying even know.
Let me put it this way, Tom Biscardi isn't one of the parents, but he
supplied the nursery.
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