Decades go by and not one self-professed "bigfoot researcher" sets foot in Yakima to meet the principles of the PGF hoax and ask around if people know about it.
First, what good would it have done for them to meet Bob Heironimus. He didn’t want his story spread around—that’s what he told Hammermeister and Bohannon. And he said in an interview that he promised Patterson especially not to tell “the media,” which presumably an interviewer who might file an article with a Bigfoot newsletter would be. Bob Heironimus was only likely to share his tale with friendly questioners, like Jim Gosney.
Second, what good would it have done to “ask around if people know about it.” That’s just hearsay. As for the asking the supposed suit witnesses at the Idle Hour about it, they’d likely have said they saw the suit on a date before (Merle Warehime) or after October 1967, as did the two I got to before they learned that the truth wasn’t helpful to Bob: Bernard Hammermeister and Gary Record.
Less than 10% of Bigfoot researchers in the nation live within easy enough driving distance of Yakima to able to make regular weekend trips there, unlike Greg Long, who lives in a Seattle suburb. In addition, Long was familiar with Yakima, and may have had friends there with whom he could dine or sleep overnight, owing to his lengthy UFO research there in the 1980s. His book on his findings,
Examining the Earthlight Theory: The Yakima UFO Microcosm, was published in 1990 by the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies.
Greg Long nevertheless complains about the inaction of Bigfoot researchers on page 14 of his book. But what he complains of is not that they didn’t locate a hoax, but that they didn’t investigate Patterson’s character and background. He suggests that they were willfully blind.
But they were aware of Patterson’s flaws in general. Dahinden, Green, and Perez made cautionary statements about him, calling him shady (Perez), a used-car salesman type, irresponsible, etc. They were aware of his mistreatment of Gimlin, at a minimum. Others too: Byrne discovered P&G had had both had brushes with the law. Although he didn’t print anything to that effect, he may have passed on the word privately to others. (He wrote a letter to an employee of the American Museum of Natural History about it, though.) Most of those I mentioned visited Yakima at some point, as did others.
Long realizes this and complained elsewhere, in interviews, that they should have been more outspoken. But there were two good or goodish reasons why leading Bigfoot researchers didn’t make a big stink about what they knew:
1. They thought the film was the main thing and that it couldn’t have been hoaxed, based on studies by Krantz, Dahinden, Bayanov et al., Glickman, etc., and the opinions of various Hollywood experts. Therefore, the character of the filmer was inconsequential.
Long’s opinions to the contrary are mostly bluster (TMoB, pp. 377–78 & 430–32), such as that he could easily match the Bigfoot walk (let’s see a video!) and that “When it comes to the truthfulness of a fantastic story . . the character of the witness . . . are [sic] absolutely paramount.” That’s a non sequitur as applied to the PGF, because Patterson doesn’t have just a story, as Long suggests, he has evidence, which puts his character in the background. Long’s response? In an interview he said that “the film isn’t evidence.” (Take that, Zapruder!)
2. They wanted continued cooperation from and access to Mrs. Patterson and Gimlin. This was helpful in obtaining information that came out over the years, and photo permissions for books and articles.
As for asking around and “meeting the principals of the PGF hoax,” Bigfoot researchers probably presumed that the hoax claimant was a phony. (Chris Murphy mentions three hoax claims that got some publicity and fizzled, associated with: John Chambers, Harry Kemball, and Clyde Reinke. See his
Know the Sasquatch/Bigfoot, pp. 100–01.) They were aware of members of the public claiming to be involved in famous events without any evidence. There was a famous case of a person who briefly fooled the media into publicizing his claim, with lots of ingenious supporting detail, that he was the mime inside King Kong in the original movie, although the creature in that movie was a 14-inch-high flexible doll. For all we know, his character was impeccable, as was the character of the person who misled the author of a recent best-seller on Hiroshima with his tale of being deeply involved in the event (which he wasn’t, it turned out) and having lots of new information, which he didn’t.) So they didn’t bother checking out rumors about Bigfoot Bob.
Well, that’s not exactly true, In the aftermath of lawyer Barry Woodard’s 1998 announcement, René Dahinden arrived in Yakima in 1999, checked around, and advised not bothering to counter his claims. I presume that was because he thought they we're flimsy.
Once a real journalist, a real investigator goes to Yakima, he gets the whole story, Bob Heironimus in the suit, everyone at his work and around town know it's him.
Long was never a journalist in the sense of working for a media organization. He was an author who wrote the UFO book I mentioned and occasionally wrote articles. He was employed as a technical writer for a technology firm.
He assuredly didn’t get “the whole story” about Heironimus and his claims. Those claims often weren’t checked rigorously, or even casually in many cases, for error, self-contradiction, or plausibility. (For instance, Heironimus’s last-minute claim that he permanently glued an artificial eye into the Bigfoot mask was eagerly swallowed (TMoB, pp. 402–04) without realizing that if it had been there, the Opal’s-place suit-witnesses and head-wearers would have mentioned it.)
DeAtley's business was in trouble. He is right that half a million sounds like a lot. But you are committing huge amounts of capital, binding yourself to labor and suppliers, Murphy's law prevails and you can lose money instead of making it. So to DeAtley, investing six hundred bucks into a gorilla suit for Patterson is chump change.
To DeAtley, mooching from his fridge gets a relative kicked out of the house (TMoB, p. 246). He distrusted Patterson (he fired him from a job with his company (TMoB, p. 243)) and his schemes. He was a hardass tightwad. He didn’t view $600 of his money (about $4500 in today's money, by your calculation in another comment) as something to hand over to a feckless relative he disliked.
He has a million dollars of business credit line.
Citation needed. (To put it mildly—Dun & Bradstreet probably knew of the weak financial condition of his company, so his credit line was likely small and was dependent on signed contracts for construction deals. It was likely doled out in stages, too.)
And whatever loans Superior Asphalt got was the company’s money. It would have been illegal for DeAtley to use the company’s money for Patterson’s venture. His firm was likely audited; it definitely employed a chief accountant. DeAtley wasn’t in the position of Scrooge McDuck gamboling among a pile of gold coins.
Personally things were tight for him, he claimed. It seems reasonable to believe him, if his company was in trouble.
He has been watching Roger, his brother-in-law, film a rented gorilla suit out of Hollywood.
You have no evidence for saying DeAtley was watching Patterson’s film of a rented suit—it’s just willful supposition. It’s willful because, as far as you know, that occurred in 1961, according to the timeline seemingly implicit in Harvey Anderson’s story (TMoB, pp. 389–92). If so, there was no recency to it, as suggested by your wording.
Also, if DeAtley was watching the first filming for flaws, it’s odd that he apparently didn’t want Heironimus’s practice walks filmed for his review, as I pointed out above.
But it looks too much like a gorilla suit. They can't modify a rental. So they have to buy one from Phillip Morris.
The first sentence is mere supposition again. As for the rest, why couldn’t they have bought the suit from the rental place in LA? Most rental places will sell their costumes if asked—and often at a discount, because they’re used.
After this story breaks and effectively ends doubt about the hoax, suddenly bigfooters are out there to make sure that Bob Heironimus is exactly 7.3 blocks from Bob Gimlin and not 1 block, or whatever it is. To flood the very simple narrative with all manner of inane red herring.
That sounds like a snarky attack on my correct (accepted by Kit) correction, above, of Kit’s claim that the two lived nearby each other since 1967, instead of about ten miles apart. “7.3 blocks” is a strawman. “To flood the narrative” is another snarky strawman. I haven’t commented on Bigfoot online for five years.
Of course, one isn't saying that somehow any of this contradicts the simple story of Bob Heironimus being the guy in the suit. Is the great weight of the non-evidence the same as bigfoot sightings, where the greater the amount of non-evidence, the more likely bigfoot is to exist? If we can nitpick enough on Greg Long, then Bob Heironimus must not be in the suit? Just clouds of billowing smoke.
Most criticisms of Heironimus’s tale have not been primarily of Greg Long, and where they have been, they haven’t been just of his nits—although he has made too many of those (minor errors). If you are referring to my criticism of Long for apparently not asking Opal relevant questions, that’s very relevant to the overall reliability of his book. I.e., he might have avoided asking similar probing questions of others, or of printing their answers, if inconvenient. The credibility of Heironimus’s story is to some (large, IMO) extent dependent on the reliability of Long’s book. Or do you disagree and think that the first-glance appeal of Bob’s “simple story ” forecloses criticism of its supporting witnesses?
You mistakenly wrote in an earlier comment, “
Long might have had the wrong address for Bob Gimlin in 1967.” As I made clear, that was Kit’s mistake, and there was no “might” about it—I cited Polk’s city directories. (It’s an important correction rather than a nit, and the map I posted is important, because I claimed that it would have been more convenient for Patterson, not to mention safer, for Heironimus to have dropped the suit off there than to leave it in the trunk of his mom’s car. This makes Heironimus’s story implausible on this count. Kit disputed my claim back in the day, and probably will do so again, so this is relevant to my main purpose here—to thrash things out with him.)
My own criticisms have been substantial, not just picky. Here’s one I wrote in 2008, “Herroneous vs. Herroneous,” that contains 43 criticisms, half of them important: goo.gl/aqc6SW (You can access it by merely putting that “goo” item in your browser’s URL line and hitting Return.)
But please let’s not get involved in what I wrote there, at least not on this thread. I’m busy with other writing on this subject, and on other subjects, and also I don’t want to get burned out again.. What I’m here to do is to correct some of Kitakaze’s claims, especially the ones he’s made about me. I’ve responded to everything he’s posted so far, except his Gary Record claim, for which I’m awaiting his response to my request for the names of Heironimus’s six Idle Hour suit-witnesses.
DeAtley of course never admits directly to fraud. So he has to say he was not a part of planning the hoax, funding the suit beforehand and planning the whole announcement, marketing, and so forth.
Correct—
If he was a before-the-fact hoaxer, he’d surely deny it. But that’s a big if.
But he certainly funded the suit, the film development, etc.
Funding the suit is not “certainly” something he did, and it’s very different from funding the film development, etc., which is an after-the-event item.
Roger could not even afford gas money.
That’s why he let Gimlin pay for the gas, and let the Radfords supply the $700 for other expenses. If DeAtley had been funding him in a major way, he wouldn’t have needed their money, or the bad publicity from not paying them back, or the bad publicity from not returning the camera. (His arrest or the warrant for it was in the local paper.)
That might not be totally true. Former Benedictine monk and Bigfoot provocateur Matt Moneymaker™ has apparently seen hundreds of such creatures, many of them while filming his TV show. The cameras only catch his sincere reactions though, never the actual beast because it's not very interesting. He's far more photogenic. He doesn't care about all his HATERS either; as he put it earlier this year when accepting the Nobel Prize™, "Technology is just a tool of the devil, praise gawd, and besides it would just blow the surprise, thank you Jesus praise gawd!. That "surprise" of course being an authentic glimpse of Bigfoot that paying customers of Moneymaker™ Amalgamated Tour Industries® LLC get when they go on a MATI Bigfoot Tour™. They're that outfit known for running Bigfoot ragged all over the country and then laughing about it. Don't they know Bigfoot are people too?!