# Has Bigfoot Been Found? 2 Men say they have a body



## R y a n (Apr 4, 2005)

So what is the odds of this being truly real?

This story just came out across the AP wire...

YOU decide! :beer:

Has Bigfoot Been Found?
By Mark Whittington, published Aug 13, 2008 
http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... html?cat=8

http://www.searchingforbigfoot.com/

Has the legendary Bigfoot been found? Two men from Georgia, Mathew Whitten and Rich Dyer, claims that they have not only found him, *according to the Inquisitr,* but have the body. A photograph has been presented as proof and the finders also claim DNA evidence.

Both the photographic evidence and what is claimed to be DNA evidence will be presented at a press conference in Palo Alto California. The press release, issued by the group claiming to have found Bigfoot, that accompanies the photo describes the Bigfoot creature as follows:










"The creature is seven feet seven inches tall. 
It weighs over five hundred pounds. 
The creature looks like it is part human and part ape-like. 
It is male. 
It has reddish hair and blackish-grey eyes. 
It has two arms and two legs, and five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot. The feet are flat and similar to human feet.

Its footprint is 16 and three-quarters inches long and five and three-quarters inches wide at the heel. From the palm of the hand to the tip of the middle finger, its hands are eleven and three-quarters inches long and six and one-quarter inches wide. The creatures walk upright. (_Several of them were sighted on the same day that the body was found._) The teeth are more human-like than ape-like."

*Some critics smell a hoax in the making.* If this is a hoax, it would not be the first one.

Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is alleged to be a primate that inhabits remote woods, mainly in the Pacific Northwest. Proponents maintain that Bigfoot is a hitherto unknown primate, possibly related to Gigantopithecus, a species of ape that died out a hundred thousand years ago. Others suggest that Bigfoot may be a cousin of **** Erectus, a species of human that is an ancestor of modern **** Sapiens and lived two million years ago. However no **** Erectus remains have ever been found in North America.


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## sierra03 (Jan 27, 2005)

sweet! whats for dinner?


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## rowdie (Jan 19, 2005)

Could it be true?????


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## USSapper (Sep 26, 2005)

Thats just me on Saturday at WeFest


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## johngfoster (Oct 21, 2007)

Looks like Chewey to me.


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## Leo Porcello (Jul 10, 2003)

> was found by Matthew Whitton (AKA Gary Parker)


This guy has two names??

Looks like they tossed him in a common chest freezer. The big guy deserves better than that!

I guess the old hairy guy must of died of heat exhaution? You would think this time of year he would be in Canada not GA??


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## carp_killer (Nov 24, 2006)

wonder what he would cost to mount :lol: my guess is just another hoax but maybe


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## MSG Rude (Oct 6, 2003)

R y a n said:


> So what is the odds of this being truly real?
> 
> This story just came out across the AP wire...
> 
> ...


*AND AT THE SAME PRESS-RELEASE, THE DEM'S WILL BE ANOUNCING A NEW PRESIDENTAL CANDIDATE THAT HAS MORE LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE THEN THE CURRENT ONE AS THIS GUY WAS THE LEADER OF ITS PACK.*


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## djleye (Nov 14, 2002)

Field hunter forgot to shave at the convention he was at!!!!!   :lol:


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## buckseye (Dec 8, 2003)

Hey I used to rougneck with that feller, he went AWOL on us back in the early 80's. It was a pleasure to work with him, strong as an ape! :lol:


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## rowdie (Jan 19, 2005)

What if it is true?? I've always believed becuase why else would the Natives have a name?


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## Chuck Smith (Feb 22, 2005)

Does anyone know how they came to possess this critter? How was it discovered, killed, captured, etc.

Because a 7 ft body in that size of a freeze whole......I don't think so. Try putting a 200lb bear in a freezer whole.....there is not that much space. This is just my observation.


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## rednek (Dec 29, 2006)

> Chuck Smith
> 
> Because a 7 ft body in that size of a freeze whole......I don't think so. Try putting a 200lb bear in a freezer whole.....there is not that much space. This is just my observation.


thats what i noticed to


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## Leo Porcello (Jul 10, 2003)

rowdie said:


> What if it is true?? I've always believed becuase why else would the Natives have a name?


I believe it is true and if it is not I still believe there truely is a BF.


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## dblkluk (Oct 3, 2002)

IMO..hoax.. No legitimate news sources stated in the article. (The inquisiter?? C'mon... :roll: )



> This story just came out across the AP wire...


I could not find anything about it on the AP website..

The website linked is associated _content_..not press.

Do a google search theres a *big* difference...
:wink:


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## R y a n (Apr 4, 2005)

Heck I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Wouldn't it be great if it were true? Imagine the immediate interest in hunting one down?

They say they will be having a press conference today right?

We'll see...


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## dblkluk (Oct 3, 2002)

> Imagine the immediate interest in hunting one down?


If its true I'm moving to Northern georgia and opening store selling .."I hunted Bigfoot and all I got was this lousy T-shirt", T shirts. :lol:


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

Chuck Smith said:


> Does anyone know how they came to possess this critter? How was it discovered, killed, captured, etc.
> 
> Because a 7 ft body in that size of a freeze whole......I don't think so. Try putting a 200lb bear in a freezer whole.....there is not that much space. This is just my observation.


Oh I don't know. When longshot was living in Phoenix one of the neighbor ladies got her husband to fit in a freezer. The police couldn't figure out why there was no blood in the house. She froze him before she used an axe to chop him up and put him in the dumpster. She was so dumb she put him in the dumpster at the beauty salon that she owned. 
I don't know how big the guy was.


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## jgat (Oct 27, 2006)

Looks kinda like Rosie to me.


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## franchi (Oct 29, 2005)

jgat said:


> Looks kinda like Rosie to me.


Nah......too skinny to be Rosie.


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## jgat (Oct 27, 2006)

dblkluk said:


> IMO..hoax.. No legitimate news sources stated in the article. (The inquisiter?? C'mon... :roll: )
> 
> 
> 
> ...


By the way, props for the research on this! It made me laugh just a little bit. :beer:


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## dblkluk (Oct 3, 2002)

Its amazing what a guy can do..with google and two minutes.

Insert Leo joke here.... :lol:


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## R y a n (Apr 4, 2005)

jgat said:


> dblkluk said:
> 
> 
> > IMO..hoax.. No legitimate news sources stated in the article. (The inquisiter?? C'mon... :roll: )
> ...


Did anyone else see how many big news stations and blogs are picking up this story and repeating it?

It's interesting how many are doing a story on it.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ha ... been+found

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=has ... a=N&tab=wn


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## Leo Porcello (Jul 10, 2003)

R y a n said:


> Wouldn't it be great if it were true? Imagine the immediate interest in hunting one down?
> 
> .


Please don't hunt Harry Henderson down. Seriosly though I think someone would have serious mental issues if they wanted to hunt a BF down. uke:


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## R y a n (Apr 4, 2005)

The originating website has a story out today on their "spike" in web traffic:

http://www.inquisitr.com/2388/lessons-f ... fic-spike/

*Lessons from a Bigfoot Traffic Spike* 
Anyone visiting the site for the first time looking for Bigfoot pics, please see this post for the pic and details, or our introduction *here*

Every now and then in the life of a blog, you post something that drives traffic through the roof. In our case, my post last night about news of Bigfoot allegedly being found drove record traffic to The Inquisitr, delivering out first ever day in excess of 100,000 page views (we're 3 months old). Traffic has been up the last two weeks across the board, but nothing close to this post, so it was completely unexpected, although always welcomed. The surge is starting to slow down giving me a little time to reflect on what we could have done better, and what I learned from the experience. Here's my lessons from a Bigfoot traffic spike.

*Always Be Prepared*

A Digg front page early on aside, we'd never had a huge day like this before, and we weren't prepared. I woke up to find JR emailing me to say that the site was throwing the occasional database error and was generally slow. At that stage the story had 30,000 page views and the peak was yet to come. The challenge was to maximize server response times and neutralize any time outs, thankfully though our MediaTemple Dedicated Virtual server never once crashed, so in some ways we were lucky, I'd hate to think what would have happened if I'd been on a standalone box or shared hosting plan.

The scramble was on. How do we bring the load down. I started with WP-Super-Cache, but this took some time to install because I couldn't ftp into the site for a while due to the load. Got that installed&#8230;then nothing. Oh, you have to update your .htaccess file, did that, and likely due to a redirect plugin I had running, it messed with the site settings, causing posts to return a post not found error message. Scrub that, look again, eventually find Hypercache and install that. Not sure if it's working or not, but something took the edge of the memory load, even if the CPU was still tracking 99-100%.

My error was not having something installed and ready in advance. I spent hours trying to fix a problem when I should have had something easily at hand. If you're running a WordPress install, find a good cache solution, and have it ready, or if you're confident with the settings, have it on all the time, like many of the bigger sites do.

*Sometimes quirky works*

I know a few people have had a chuckle today over The Inquisitr getting traffic from a Bigfoot story, but we're fortunate that the site has always had a space for odd and funny stories. When I wrote the post, I had no idea it would deliver this sort of traffic, but it did in spades. Sometimes thinking outside the square and being quirky can pay off. The lesson is that sometimes it pays to be different.

*You don't have to be first, but early helps*

We weren't the first site with the bigfoot story, but we were among the first to report it as word got out. Being first and unique is an important part of defining any blog, but sometimes a good story should be reported even when you're not first to it. I'd bet the traffic to the sites who had this first was much bigger again, but we still managed to stake our claim.

*Sometimes Digg doesn't matter*

The interesting thing for me in the traffic is that the story never hit the top of any of the major social voting sites, including Digg. We got a bit of traffic from Reddit (3k) but the rest came from all over the place (Google was 20%). Now we'll never say no to being Dugg, and we love Digg traffic, but ultimately sometimes Digg doesn't matter in scoring a surge of traffic. The other interesting thing with the traffic, 21% was via the front page direct, not the post. This in part was driven by references in the press to inquisitr.com without links. People seem to have no issues with copy and pasting a URL directly in for more. Naturally we'd have liked hard links, but you take what you can get.

*Intro post*

When I realized that the traffic was increasing and a significant amount of it was hitting the front page first, I put a post up introducing the site to new readers, complete with link to the Bigfoot post they were looking for so they could easily find it, and left the post on top for 6 hours. It's a strategy used by Darren Rowse and I have no idea yet whether it worked but it's a decent idea that's worth considering if you ever get a big traffic spike.

*Conclusion*

Naturally I hope we have more days like this to help pay the bills and to grow the site. Whether this spike results in more long term traffic for The Inquisitr is yet to be seen, although I've noticed with smaller hits that the base level on the slow days keeps showing bigger numbers so I'm hopeful that this is some welcome momentum for the site. The lessons learned for me are to be prepared, and keep at it because you never know when you'll strike a hit post. It can be done, and anyone with enough smarts and some luck thrown in for good measure can do it.


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## Chaws (Oct 12, 2007)

Press conference is tomorrow.


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## dblkluk (Oct 3, 2002)

I dont think the press conference is going to happen... :lol:


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## Leo Porcello (Jul 10, 2003)

I have to ask what the heck is on his belly? Guts?


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## Maverick (Mar 4, 2002)

I bet it turns out to be the cave man off the Geico commercials.....


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## huntingdude16 (Jul 17, 2007)

Nah. I bet it's sasquatch from the jack links commercials.

He had such a promising career...


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## jgat (Oct 27, 2006)

huntingdude16 said:


> Nah. I bet it's sasquatch from the jack links commercials.
> 
> He had such a promising career...


I always love that one!


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## bluebird (Feb 28, 2008)

Dam i thought my girlfriend just left me but she ended up in a cooler :eyeroll:


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## buckseye (Dec 8, 2003)

I heard it was Hilliary C out on a bad one and got mistaken for squawssnatch.. er sasquwatch .... :lol:


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## rowdie (Jan 19, 2005)

I think the jerky commercials have a better costume than whats in that freezer. Did anyone notice the eyes??? It looks like you can see the guys eyebrows, and the pale white skin. They could have at least used a black guy to wear it, or use some make-up. These guys are a joke.


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## Leo Porcello (Jul 10, 2003)

Its on CNN's Front Page now:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/08/14/bigfoot.body/index.html


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## R y a n (Apr 4, 2005)

Leo Porcello said:


> Its on CNN's Front Page now:
> 
> http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/08/14/bigfoot.body/index.html


And the plot thickens...

:beer:


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## HUNTNFISHND (Mar 16, 2004)

Are these the same guys that supposedly had video evidence of an alien a few weeks ago? What ever happened with that? :eyeroll:

My hunch says hoax!


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## fylling35 (Jun 15, 2007)

I hope it is true...just to prove that we humans don't know as much as we think we do about our world.

If it is a hoax...it sure is a good one!! Lots of News surrounding this "find"


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## ND_HUNT (Jan 19, 2008)

looks like bigfoot is 96 % opossum and 4% human.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080815/us_nm/bigfoot_dc


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## h2ofwlr (Feb 6, 2004)

*Bigfoot Press Conference Yields Little Evidence, Lots of Scorn*
Scientific American
August 15, 2008 in Archaeology & Paleontology | 
By Erik Vance

Enthusiast says he wants to make as much money as possible from alleged Sasquatch find, skeptics are hardly convinced

PALO ALTO, CALIF.-It was perhaps the most highly touted press conference of the week, but it didn't reveal much in the way of evidence: Three bigfoot enthusiasts announced today that a series of genetic tests performed on samples taken from a carcass they claim is a Sasquatch came back as a mixture of human and opossum.
In addition to the mixed DNA results, Tom Biscardi, Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer showed the audience two blurry photos, one of a solitary figure in mixed hardwood forest and another of the mouth of what appeared to be the tongue and teeth of a primate.

Nevertheless, fielding questions from a packed room in Palo Alto, the trio called their discovery groundbreaking and held to their claim that the animal they are currently holding in "an undisclosed location" is indeed the legendary bigfoot.

"We're not bigfoot hunters originally," Whitton said. "We stumbled upon this creature. It was a stroke of luck, I can tell you that."

Whitton and Dyer said they discovered the carcass when they were hiking in a forest near their home sometime in June and that it has been stored in a large freezer since then. They refused to say exactly where and when, stating only that it was in northern Georgia and that they captured video of several live animals.

They said when they found the carcass they hauled it into a truck and brought it to a freezer. They then set up a Web site to offer tours into the area and made an announcement on a bigfoot enthusiast radio program.

That's when Biscardi got involved, moved the animal to another location, and began contacting the media. In the week before the press conference, Whitton and Dyer spent several days sparring with skeptics and created a YouTube video where they held a stuffed bear up to the camera and repeated their claims of having found a Sasquatch.

Meanwhile, Biscardi sent three samples of the carcass to biologist Curtis Nelson at the University of Minnesota for analysis. In an e-mail, Nelson told Biscardi that most of DNA segments taken from two of the samples matched human DNA. One came back as a likely match for an American opossum. Biscardi said this is likely from a stomach sample and that the creature might have eaten an opossum. He did not say why he had sampled from the stomach.

Despite Biscardi's assurances that soon he would bring in scientists from Stanford University and journalists from Fox News to inspect the body, scientists are skeptical that the find is legitimate. "It's about what I expected," said Jeffrey Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology from Idaho State University in Pocatello who has studied the bigfoot phenomenon. "Today they should have produced a physical piece of the corpse, if not the corpse itself. Until they produce the body, it doesn't matter."

"What they should have done is contact a reputable scientist and have it examined at a known university," said Benjamin Radford, who writes for the Skeptical Inquirer magazine and has followed bigfoot hunters for more than a decade. "Instead, this whole thing is very cloak and dagger. It all about, 'We have unnamed scientists working at an undisclosed location under armed guard.'"

Meldrum said it's still remotely possible the claims are genuine, but that the group's behavior resembles that of previous hoaxes. He said that even if the genetic testing had turned up some evidence that it was bigfoot, no one can verify where the animal was found.

Today's pronouncement was not Biscardi's first. In 2005 he claimed that he had captured a Sasquatch. The beast never materialized, and Biscardi said he had been swindled by a deranged attention-seeker.
Radford says hoaxers make money off tours through bigfoot country and with documentary films-a motivation Biscardi doesn't discount. When asked at the press conference how much money he expects to make from his alleged discovery, Biscardi said, "As much as I possibly can."

He said, however, that he will satisfy all skeptics when he releases the actual body. Earlier this week he invited Megyn Kelly of Fox News to Georgia to view the carcass.


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## fishhook (Aug 29, 2002)

I suppose ma was at home cooking up dinner when pa got run over by a toyota prius.

they should give the body back so the "bigfoot's" can have a proper burial.

Call me skeptical, but i call B.S. It's more than ironic to me these guys sell bigfoot merchandise and just happened to find a 7 foot primate. Shoot, i think i saw that dude when i was at the pool with my kids last week. Either that or he was just hairy


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## dblkluk (Oct 3, 2002)

Here's the final story for all you "believers" :lol:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,406101,00.html


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## bandman (Feb 13, 2006)

:rollin: weeeirrrdd.....Nice work inspector Cluck X's 2. (Now get that mile wide grin off your face.) :lol:


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## jgat (Oct 27, 2006)

It was all a hoax??? NO WAY! :x


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## R y a n (Apr 4, 2005)

:lol:

Best quote from the article:



> The upshot? The real Bigfoot, once found, is now missing.


Too funny. I can't believe they thought the hoax would work. They really took it far!

So now they are on the run from the law after selling it and the rights to someone?

Nice!


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## bluebird (Feb 28, 2008)

:rollin: :rollin: :rollin:


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## jgat (Oct 27, 2006)

R y a n said:


> So now they are on the run from the law after selling it and the rights to someone?
> Nice!


I doubt they're on the run. They are probably out to sea chilling with their mermaids.


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## varmit b gone (Jan 31, 2008)

jgat said:


> R y a n said:
> 
> 
> > So now they are on the run from the law after selling it and the rights to someone?
> ...


Lol Thats too funny


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## R y a n (Apr 4, 2005)

jgat said:


> R y a n said:
> 
> 
> > So now they are on the run from the law after selling it and the rights to someone?
> ...


 :lol: :thumb:


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## diver_sniper (Sep 6, 2004)

This one may not have stood up. But that big b*stard is still out there. You just wait.


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## usmarine0352 (Nov 26, 2005)

.

That one guy was so stupid too.

Now that he did that, he's been fired as a police officer.

Go figure.

What a weirdo.

.


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## Ref (Jul 21, 2003)

The Mpls. Tibune is reporting that it was a giant hoax. The animal was ice in a gorilla suit!!!!!

I'm serious...I just read it online.


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## jonesy12 (Apr 1, 2008)

It was confirmed that it was a guy in a Gorilla suit. And who didn't see this coming???? :eyeroll:


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## h2ofwlr (Feb 6, 2004)

*Bigfoot's body a hoax, California site reveals*
And the Clayton County Police officer has lost his job
By BOB KEEFE

Cox News Service
Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Can you believe it? Georgia's "Bigfoot" was just a big hoax.

The body of a supposed ape-man found in the North Georgia mountains was nothing but an empty rubber monkey suit embedded in ice, according to California Bigfoot enthusiasts who finally got a chance to examine it last weekend.

• Photos: Georgia's not-so-proud moments 
• Cop's Bigfoot sighting has roots in Georgia lore

Recent headlines:

State may privatize mental hospitals; advocates angry 
Money for new reservoirs is drying up 
Some coastal Georgia schools close ahead of storm 
• Metro and state news [Post a comment on this story below.]

The two Atlanta men who stood up at a news conference in California last week and tried to convince the world they had found Bigfoot now apparently can't be located - just like the real Bigfoot.

Calls to Matthew Whitton, a Clayton County police officer - make that former police officer - and his car salesman buddy Rick Dyer weren't returned Tuesday.

The answering machine on a "tip line" connected to the pair's Web site, which still advertises $499 Bigfoot "expeditions," says they're still out searching for Sasquatch - as well as leprechauns, dinosaurs, unicorns, Jimmy Hoffa and Elvis.

Searching for Bigfoot Inc., the California outfit that paid an undisclosed sum to Whitton and Dyer for rights to their story and their find, says the pair checked out of the hotel where they had been put up over the weekend.

According to a news release on Searching for Bigfoot's Web site, the whole scam unraveled when a block of ice containing the "body" melted over the weekend. Whitton and Dyer later confessed that it was just a costume, according to the release.

Why the two Georgians contrived the cross-country con isn't clear.

What is certain is that Whitton, 28, on medical leave after being shot in the wrist by a robbery suspect earlier this year, won't be going back to work at the Clayton County Police Department.

As soon as he heard Whitton's Bigfoot was a big fake, "I terminated him," said Police Chief Jeffrey Turner said Tuesday.

"He's disgraced himself, he's an embarrassment to the Clayton County Police Department, his credibility and integrity as an officer is gone, and I have no use for him," Turner said. "His behavior is unbecoming of that of a police officer."

"This turn of events from hero to someone who defrauds a nation is just baffling. I don't know how he got from one point to the other," Turner said.

The chief said he wants to send Whitton his termination paperwork and get his uniforms back. However, he said, "We haven't been able to get in touch with him."

Kathy Jefcoats of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributed to this article.


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