I am not here to prove or disprove that the Patterson/Gimlin Movie is real and shows a real Sasquatch, but a few things we need to consider about Heironimus and his version of proof, courtesy of John Green:
A few things to consider about Bob Heironimus’ tall tale./For those who have not read Greg Long’s book
by John Green, Used with Permission
1) He and his attorney tried to sell the story in the late 1990’s
2) He initially told Greg Long he had nothing to do with Patterson’s attempted Bigfoot documentary.
“I can tell you all I know about Patterson in about five minutes.” p 145
“I didn’t, you know, run around with him, I just knew him.” p 146
“Were you part of that movie? No,” he answered flatly. p 147
“Yeah, I knew who he was, and I rode horses with him a couple of times, you know, and you know, this is just riding in the mountains. That wasn’t any film documentary or anything.” p 148
“So are you saying you weren’t in that movie he was producing? Well, I’m not going to say that. No.” p 149
“How many hours do you think you spent with Patterson?...My whole life?...I don’t know, maybe two days.” p 151-2
Long comments: “He had denied anything to do with movie on the South Fork.” Long knew that was a lie because he had a picture showing Heironimus among a group of cowboys photographed during Patterson’s failed attempt to make a documentary. p 154
3) After studying his first taped interview Greg Long states, “When I finished, I concluded that I didn’t believe Bob Heironimus.” Mrs. Long’s reaction, “He’s lying.” p 152.
But after Heironimus changes his story to what Long wants to hear: “I can’t find any evidence of Bob’s being a liar.” p 425. He could have found the evidence in his own words in his own book.
4) Heironimus claims there was an ape suit in his car trunk (in this case in his mother’s car and at her home) for just a single day after he got back from California. In Long’s book five independent witnesses tell of him having such a suit in his car at other times and places. None saw it at his mother’s place.
The first time Long heard of Heironimus he was told about the suit, and that it was in Heironimus’ car for a long time. Les Johnson -- “There was an ape suit. Bob Heironimus wore it.”….”I was in the Idle Hour Tavern in Wiley City.” ….”Bob Heironimus said that in the back of his Buick—he had a blue Buick—was an ape suit, or a suit. They were talkin’ about this suit. …”Everybody in town talked about it.”… “They were making fun about this suit, like, ‘We’re going to fool everybody’.”…”The Idle Hour Tavern’s where we’d go to congregate, lie to each other, and tell these big stories and try to make out like we was somethin’.”.
Long asks, “Do you remember any discussion about Bigfoot, or Bigfoot pranks?”
“All the time.”…..”He apparently carried this thing in his car for a long time.” p 47-48
Gary Johnson – “That suit Bob wore was observed in the trunk of a car right outside that famous water hole down there in Wiley City.” p 51
John Ballard – Long asks him, ‘Was Heironimus capable of running around like a Bigfoot in the Yakima Valley?” Ballard, “Not beyond him. I think he did it to scare people.”…”I’ve heard rumors, yeah. Just like the rumor of Bob Heironimus having the Bigfoot suit, which was made out of horsehide.”… I never saw it, but what I heard was it was gray horsehide. I heard it was in Bob Heironimus’ car.”p 232
Merle Warehime – “Bob Heironimus was the guy who wore the monkey suit. It was always a joke.” When Long suggests Heironimus might have put on a costume to help Patterson convince the public of the existence of Bigfoot, Warehime responds: “I don’t think it was that complicated….It was kind of fun, go get drunk, put the suit on and run out in front of somebody, you know.” Long says he was told that the suit was in Warehime’s Circle Inn Tavern and Warehime says he has heard that but it was when he was gone for a couple of days. “So you never saw the suit yourself?” “In the back of the car, yeah.” “Oh, you did see it?”…”I believe we were out in the Ahtanum by that old church.” p 331
Bob Hammermeister – “Yep. It was probably at Wiley City. There was a bunch of us…I seen something in the car, a big old pile of fur there was what it was…I think it was in the trunk.”
“Did Bob say it was a Bigfoot suit?” “ Yeah.” p 397
Hammersmeister is the only one who mentions seeing the suit after the Patterson movie was made. The others were talking about the previous year when there was a rash of local reports of Bigfoot sightings, or perhaps even earlier.
These statements set out clearly that Heironimus was the one who had an ape suit and that he was using it to stage Bigfoot ‘sightings’ for the amusement of himself and his friends A connection with Roger Patterson is suggested only by Greg Long, and in one case is specifically denied--although making a fool of Patterson may have been the origin of the game.
5) Heironimus drew a map of his supposed trip to Bluff Creek, indicating that he met Patterson and Gimlin at Willow Creek and they drove west from there before turning onto the Bluff Creek Road. Long, who knew that Willow Creek was many miles west of the Bluff Creek turnoff persuaded him to change his story. p 347-8 and 366-7
6) Heironimus told of seeing a rodeo banner at Happy Camp on his way to Bluff Creek. Long later learned there had never been a rodeo at Happy Camp and decided it must have been a banner for the Bigfoot Jamboree on Labor Day weekend, therefore the film must have been shot in early September—weeks before the leaves would have turned red. p 420
7) Heironimus drew a map of the area where he said the film was made, showing that they went two and a quarter miles up the Bluff Creek road to the place where they were camped, and another half a mile to the film site, a total of two and three quarter miles from the Klamath highway. p 366. The actual distance, on a twisting dirt road, is more than 10 times that.
8) Heironimus not only does not know where the film site is, he is also not at all familiar with the film, since it shows Patterson and Gimlin with three different horses, and he mentions only two, even claiming that he had to ride double behind Gimlin. p 348
9) To anyone who saw the film site before time altered it, Heironimus’ story makes it immediately obvious that he was never there. He tells of Patterson and Gimlin helping him to put the suit on and to stand up, then, “I started walking. I came to the creek. I walked through the sand.” p 349
He does not know that the creek bottom is not sand, but slippery rocks that are best walked on carefully, or that on the far side he would have encountered a vertical cut in the bank of the sandbar which was more than two feet high (it shows in the film) that would have been an unforgettable obstacle for a man in a suit with legs so stiff he needed help to get to his feet from a sitting position.
10) Heironimus continued, pointing at a map he had drawn, “I walked across here—through a few trees right here, maybe a downed log in here and some brush. Anyway I turned right here and looked at them. I looked back twice. I walked a little ways further towards these trees right here on the right. They said ‘Cut! That’s it!’ Here’s this big blow-over [uprooted tree]. I jumped down in this hole.” … “Why did you jump in the hole?” “I was afraid of getting shot’…. “It was October, you know. They did have hunters down there.” P 349
He is obviously not aware of what is plain on the film, that the creature was always on the same side of the creek, that for a considerable time it disappears from the camera’s view as it walks through the trees, that when it emerges it is much too far away for anyone walking beside a noisy creek (and supposedly wearing a padded headpiece) to have heard anyone say anything. Aside from that, since the sandbar is in the creekbed there could never have been a large tree there to blow over and leave a hole.
Note also that although Heironimus places the event in October, and in hunting season, later he apparently accepts Long’s conclusion that because of the “rodeo banner” the filming must have been in early September. Heironimus’ readiness to change elements of his story whenever someone else proposes a different version suggests that he thinks that the others may be telling the truth and might even be able to prove it, while he knows that he is lying.
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For those who have not read Greg Long’s book, and those like me who failed to appreciate what they were reading, there is on pages 47 and 48 a very clear outline of the actual role played by Bob Heironimus. In recounting an interview with Les Johnson, an Ahtanum Valley rancher, Long writes:
“There was an ape suit. Bob Heironimus wore it.”
I couldn’t speak. Had I found the man who played Bigfoot in Patterson’s film? Was the mystery over?
“Bob Heironimus,” I finally managed to let out.”
“Yep, Bob Heironimus,” he repeated with a big grin. “I was in the Idle Hour Tavern in Wiley City. There were fifteen or twenty guys, some of the guys that hung around with Roger. The guys were drinkin’ and talkin’ about things they had been doin’. Bob Heironimus said that in the back of his Buick—he had a blue Buick—was an ape suit, or a suit. They were talkin’ about this suit. Someone said, ‘What are you talkin’ about?’ And someone said, ‘Go and look in the back of Bob’s Buick.’ The guys were teasing each other about it. Everybody in town talked about it. There were lots of guys who sat around and talked about it.”
I probed deeper into his memories of this event. He recalled that among the onlookers grouped around Heironimus’s car were the Ridge Runners, members of a jeep club. Johnson was either walking toward to (sic) the tavern or leaving it. “I heard them talkin’ when I went by. They were laughin’ and gigglin’. They were makin’ fun about this suit, like ‘We’re going to fool everybody.’ I mean, I got that opinion. But you couldn’t fool us. We all lived here.” He chuckled and then added: “The ‘monkey suit’ is what they called it. There’s four Heironimus boys, Bob, and Bill. Bill worked for me for a while. Then there’s Howard and Mike. The Idle Hour Tavern’s where we’d go to congregatge, lie to each other, ad tell these big stories and try to make out like we was somethin’.’
I asked, “Do you remember any discussion about Bigfoot, or Bigfoot pranks?”
“All the time.”
“Inside the tavern?”
Everywhere. It was just a hoax to me. And the group that we run with were all cowboys. We were up there in the hills runnin’ cows,, and you never seen any of those guys up there. It all took place down at the gab station [the Idle Hour Tavern].”
Farther down the page, Long asks:
“Who is this Bob Heironimus?”
“Well, I think he works for Pepsi-Cola. He must be getting’ old enough to retire. He apparently carried this thing around in his car for a long time.”
Bill Miller also chimed in with a couple of interesting articles:
Who is hoaxing who with the ‘Making of Bigfoot’?
The Kal Korff Foreword
Earlier this year I had heard about a new book coming out that was supposed to answer many of the questions concerning the authenticity of the Roger Patterson/Bob Gimlin film taken in Bluff Creek, California in October of 1967.
Having followed the subject of the Sasquatch for many years and having seen much of the evidence that had already been presented about the creature that Bob and Roger had allegedly encountered, I was expecting to see some real definitive evidence to the contrary coming from a book that was to be claiming the Patterson/Gimlin film was a hoax.
As a Bigfoot enthusiast in my own right, I decided to look at this book through the eyes of a fellow investigator and not so much as a Bigfoot researcher. I think that some of the things that I observed during the reading of “The Making of Bigfoot” are worth pointing out and certainly calls into question just how definitive this book really is and more important, it calls into question the veracity of some of the people who took part in it.
Many of you in the Bigfoot community have already heard from some the critics of this new book, but what I want to do is draw attention to a couple of things that the past critics did not address. The foreword of the book was written by Kal K. Korff.
Why Greg Long, the books author, wanted to connect his book to Kal Korff is something that I am sure many Bigfoot researchers and/or people who have seen Korff’s other works have asked themselves and possibly by the time Greg Long has read this article, I suspect that he too, will be one of them. The first time I heard of Kal Korff was when I saw a video he had done called “Final Verdict: JFK’s Murder Solved!” My having personally studied the JFK assassination for over a quarter of a century and having bought and read through a complete set of the 26 volumes of the Warren Commission and studied the findings of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, I wanted to know just how Kal Korff had managed to do what no one else had done, including two Government inquiries. Rather than to go into great depths of the fiasco pertaining to Korff’s video on the Kennedy case – I’ll just share a quick example of his inability or a lack of desire to learn the subject matter before making definitive claims about something. In the opening minutes of the ‘Final Verdict: JFK’s Murder Solved’ video … Korff mentions a little girl in “red pants” who is seen on the Zapruder film. Korff then gives her name as Linda Kay Willis and tells us what she said about the shooting. Linda Kay Willis had testified before the Warren Commission. I should tell everyone that the girl Kal Korff is talking about seeing on the Zapruder film was Rosemary Willis, not Linda Kay Willis. Rosemary is Linda Kay’s sister. Rosemary did not testify before the Commission, nor did either sister have on pants during the Kennedy assassination. Korff was in error because he did not know his subject matter before trying to appear as an authority on it!
Kal Korff wrongly identifies the little girl in the Zapruder Film and mistook her for wearing pants
While it probably isn’t necessary to say any more about Kal Korff and his uncanny ability to get his facts wrong, allow me to share some of what he has written pertaining to the Patterson/Gimlin film being a hoax.
In an article that Korff wrote for the Skeptical Inquirer, he mentions a program called “World's Greatest Hoaxes: Secrets Finally Revealed” in which he tells the reader how the first concrete sign of a hoax surfaced when a man named Clyde Reinke, a former office manager for American National Enterprises, claimed Roger Patterson was on ANE’s payroll and how Roger and ANE were cooking up a scheme to fake a Bigfoot film.
Next, Korff writes that Bob Heironimus had seen the show pertaining to Reinke and decided to come forward and declare that he (Heironimus) was the man who wore the suit in the Patterson/Gimlin film of 1967.
Korff doesn’t bother to tell his readers that Roger Patterson didn’t work for ANE until three years after he had gotten the Bluff Creek footage. Korff also forgot to mention that the show he promoted had also stated that it was a seven foot tall man named Jerry Romny that was supposed to be the man wearing a suit in the Patterson/Gimlin film.
There is little question as to why Kal Korff left these details out of his article and certainly many of us who are familiar with the history of people coming forward and reporting that they were the individual in a monkey suit seen on the Patterson/Gimlin film know exactly why Korff did it, so the only question many of us have for Mr. Kal Korff is this … Just how many people does Korff think that he can fit into one alleged monkey suit?
Certainly to have mentioned that the Fox show ‘The Worlds Greatest Hoaxes’ had previously chosen another man to have been in a costume for the making of the Patterson/Gimlin film would have made it nearly impossible to mislead the readers into thinking that a thirty-seven year old mystery was unraveling before our eyes, so Korff just chose to withhold a valuable part of the story.
As a matter of fact, Korff reminds us in his article that the book “The Making of Bigfoot” was not written for the more knowledgeable Bigfoot community, but rather it was written more for the general public. This would certainly explain why Korff thought he could not mention Jerry Romny and get away with it.
In typical fashion, Korff then mentions that Bob Heironimus told Gimlin that he was going to come forward and tell the world about this Bigfoot hoax after thirty-five years. According to Heironimus, Gimlin was supposed to have said, “Well, don’t mention my name.” Kal Korff didn’t seem to have noticed the obvious problem with what Heironimus had said and that is after all these years if Bob Gimlin was the only person besides Roger Patterson to have been present during the filming of the famous Bluff Creek footage of 1967, then how does someone like Heironimus leave Bob Gimlin out of the story if he comes forward?
Had Lee Harvey Oswald had lived … what Heironimus claims would be like a grassy knoll shooter coming forward and admitting that he also conspired with Oswald to shoot at President Kennedy in Dallas and when he told Lee Oswald about his plans to come clean, Lee had asked him to leave his name out of it. It makes absolutely no sense that Bob Gimlin would have asked Heironimus to leave his name out of something like this when Gimlin had already been tied to that film for well over three decades.
I must say that it was quite ironic when I found that Kal Korff was linked to a web page titled “Critical Thinkers” where you’ll find both Greg Long’s book mentioned there, as well as the video Korff did on the Kennedy assassination. One has to wonder what the so called ‘critical thinker’ was thinking when he heard it said that Bob Gimlin was supposed to have not wanted his name to be mentioned concerning a hoax pertaining to the famous Patterson/Gimlin film and Kal Korff not question how ridiculous that sounded. I could only smile and think that the web page Korff was attached to should have been called the “Non-Thinkers” instead of the Critical Thinkers.
Bob Heironimus – is he making it up as he goes?There are many instances concerning what Bob Heironimus tells us that make absolutely no sense at all. Critics have been quick to mention some of more obvious problems with Bob’s story. His description about the traveling up to the film site with Patterson and Gimlin is a farce to anyone who has actually been to Bluff Creek and made the trip for themselves.
Back in 1967, I could not imagine anyone making that 20 plus mile trip up the old logging road in less than 60 to 90 minutes depending on how hard and dangerously someone wanted to drive it. Yet Bob Heironimus claimed it to be a mere four to five mile ride.
Heironimus said to Greg Long, “There may have been more than one Bigfoot suit.” Is this not something that Heironimus would know if he was part of an elaborate hoax? Could it be that Heironimus was trying to cover himself for even though he never says it in the book … there were people who knew Bob Heironimus who had seen a fur suit in the trunk of his car at the Idle Hour Tavern.
More important is the time line in which it was seen. If I followed the story correctly, Bob Heironimus said that he saw the suit when Roger Patterson brought it out at Roger’s house and had Bob walk around in it in Patterson’s backyard. The next time Heironimus allegedly saw the suit was when Patterson and Gimlin had taken it to California where Bob said he then wore it for the movie. Heironimus also said that after he returned from Bluff Creek - the very next morning his mother seen the gorilla suit in the trunk of her car. While no one saw it happen - that suit was alleged to have been taken by Patterson and Gimlin later that same day and never seen again by Bob Heironimus.
Yet Les Johnson said that Bob Heironimus was telling a group of onlookers in the parking lot of the Idle Hour Tavern how he was going to fool everybody. According to Johnson, there was talk of such pranks all the time in the tavern by the Heironimus brothers. Johnson said, “The ‘monkey suit’ is what they called it. There’s four Heironimus boys. Bob. And Bill. Bill worked for me for a while. Then there’s Howard and Mike. The Idle Hour Tavern’s where we’d go to congregate, lie to each other, and tell these big stories and try to make out like we was really somethin’.”
Greg Long never pressed Heironimus to explain away the ‘monkey suit’ that Les Johnson said Bob carried around in his car well before the Patterson/Gimlin film came into existence, nor was Heironimus ever asked just how long had he been running around with such a ‘monkey suit’ in his car.
The only attempt Greg Long made at doing anything was to try and salvage some credibility for Heironimus by asking Bob if he had maybe stopped at the bar on the way back from California and told people about the suit. Long didn’t think about Les Johnson saying how Heironimus “was” going to fool everyone. That means the event hadn’t yet occurred.
Long also never did the math as presented by Heironimus to see if the 14 hour drive back to Washington would place him at the bar at a time when people could see the suit or hear Heironimus talking about it. References to people seeing a fur suit or hearing it talked about … Les Johnson, pp. 47-48, 328; Gary Johnson, p. 51; Bob Campbell, p. 91; John Ballard, p. 232; & Jim Falon, p. 409; Merle Wareheim, p. 331; & Bernard Hammermeister, pp. 327-28.
I soon got the impression by Greg Long’s desire not to ask the right question at the right time that he may not have wanted to know the answer to some things. No better example of this can be seen anywhere than when one looks at something Heironimus had said about the suit itself.
On page 352 of the book, Heironimus tells Long, “You can see slick parts on the Bigfoot in the film.” Heironimus goes on to say that these were bare spots left on the Bigfoot suit so to make it appear that the creature was shedding its fur.
If one looks at some of the more recognized frames that can be found in the public domain … there are light patches that can be seen at various places on the creature’s body. To someone who is not familiar with a term called “reflective angle” and someone who has not studied the remaining Patterson/Gimlin film frames in any detail may very well think there was hair missing on the creature.
The fact is however, there was no hair missing on the creature in the Patterson/Gimlin film other than possibly on the hands, the soles of the feet, and select places on its face. The ‘slick parts’ that Bob Heironimus saw in the film was from the sun shining off the creature’s fur.
This look is common with any animal or even a person’s hair when being hit by direct light. The longer, the thicker and the shaggier the hair, the more the reflective glaring of sunlight will occur. As the image in the film is lightened, the more noticeable this all becomes. How we know this to be true is by watching the creature as it changes its angle to the sun while walking along the sandbar and us seeing how areas on the animals fur that looked slick or bare in earlier frames are now dark and thick in later frames. It’s obvious that the animal didn’t just grow hair within the time span of a few film frames, so what does this tell us? It tells us that Bob Heironimus saw something on the Patterson/Gimlin film that he assumed was the result of missing hair on the creature and then he incorporated this into his story by saying Roger Patterson left the hair off the suit in places so to make it look as though the creature had been shedding its fur. If one looks at the gorilla suit shown in the attached example (GS001) they will find that it too, has ‘slick parts’ on it as Heironimus called them, but in reality the gorilla suit is heavily covered in fake fur. It’s only the reflective angle of the sun’s light that makes it look in the camera’s eye to have bare patches on it.
Like Korff, Greg Long never bothered to learn the subject matter thoroughly so to spot such things, nor did he seek the advice of those who would be qualified to confirm or deny his observations. I will show another example of this behavior shortly in this article concerning the alleged light reflection in the creature’s eye.
Note how the sun shining off the fur gives a false appearance that the fur might be shedding
Other things that gave the appearance that Bob Heironimus was making things up were noticeable, as well. On page 349, Heironimus told Greg Long that Patterson had been shaking the camera as he filmed. Long then asked Heironimus how he knew that Patterson was shaking the camera. Heironimus replied by saying this about the horse Patterson had been riding, “That horse didn’t know how to buck.” This might seem innocent enough, but just prior to this in the book … Bob Heironimus told Long that once they had rode to the film site, Patterson and Gimlin had helped Bob into the fur suit.
So Heironimus had Patterson already off the horse before the filming ever took place, but tried to make it appear he had inside information as to why the film was shaky when in fact the horse bucking or not could not have had anything to do with the film once Roger had dismounted off his horse to help Heironimus into the alleged Bigfoot suit.
The books author, Greg Long, either never caught this inconsistency or if he did, he let it slide and never challenged Heironimus on this particular matter. On pages 349 and 350 of the book, Bob Heironimus tells Greg Long that when Patterson said “cut” and the filming was over … that Bob was getting very hot inside this suit. Herionimus said, “I was sweatin’.
Sweat was pouring off of me inside this thing.” Bob Heironimus told how he wanted that suit off immediately. While laying out the ground work of this part of the story to Long, Heironimus told about an uprooted tree on the sandbar that left a hole in the ground and how he jumped down into it. When asked why he got into a hole, Heironimus, obviously thinking on his feet, said he was worried about being shot by a hunter because hunting season had already started. (It is worth noting that Long tried to make a case for Heironimus being in Northern California for the hoaxing of the film around Labor Day, which is the first Monday in September. However, hunting season for deer and bear didn’t open in The Six Rivers National Forest until the third week in September.)
Both Bob Titmus and Lyle Laverty had been to the film site (Laverty only the day after) and neither man mentioned the tracks leading to an overturned tree or a hole in the ground. As a matter of fact, Bob Titmus had tracked the creature off the sandbar to a point where he found evidence that it had gone up the side of the hill well away from the film site and appeared to have sat down in some ferns.
The reason Heironimus gave for getting in this alleged hole then became two fold. The first reason Heironimus gave was to get out of a possible hunter’s aim. One might ask themselves just how deep could this hole be? Anyone ever being to the film site would know that it’s like being in a bowl surrounded by hillsides.
A mere hole in the ground would offer no cover at all from anyone looking down on the scene. In fact, in 1964 a man named Dave Blake ran a construction outfit that was given the job of logging the canyons up through Bluff Creek.
Some of the tree stumps Blake’s logging crew had left behind are visible on the Patterson/Gimlin footage. This left the area wide open to anyone up above and looking down on the scene. Then on page 350, Heironimus implied that it was also cool in this hole as if this was also part of his reason for stepping down into it. I could not image how stepping into such a hole would make me feel any cooler while inside an enclosed heavy fur suit as Heironimus had claimed to be in. Yet once again Greg Long never challenged Heironimus on any of this.
The Patterson/Gimlin film site as seen from above
Another thing that was never questioned by Greg Long was over Heironimus telling him how Patterson and Gimlin didn’t want Bob to be seen with them in Willow Creek, California because they didn’t want someone saying they had seen the three of them together when news of the Bigfoot film got out, yet after the film was said to have been shot … Heironimus told Long that the three men rode back to Patterson and Gimlin’s camp and hung around there together for a while before Heironimus eventually left to go back to Washington. One would think that if there was a real fear of hunters being in the area, then being seen together near the film site would be even more damaging than being seen talking to one another in Willow Creek.
Another thing that didn’t make sense to me was Heironimus saying that Patterson had him mail the film off to Al DeAtley (Roger Patterson’s brother-in-law) who the book eludes to DeAtley as being a party to this elaborate hoax. One might want to know why risk mailing the film and losing it when Heironimus is driving back home and only lived a short distance from DeAtley and could have easily delivered the film to Al himself?
Again Greg Long never questioned any of these things and as a fellow investigator they were in my opinion alleged instances that should have been challenged without hesitation if for no other reason than for their lack of logic. But as some of the early critics had pointed out … Long did not appear to be interested in showing Bob Heironimus out to be a liar – but rather his attention was focused on discrediting Roger Patterson! It seemed to me that an obvious pattern to try and make Bob Heironimus look credible when ever possible had emerged early on in Greg Long’s investigation.
I’ve already touched on a few of these things concerning Long’s lack of interest in challenging certain alleged details that didn’t make sense about the story Heirominus was telling him, but Long soon took it further than just ignoring Heironimus’s inconsistencies.
One of the things that Greg Long did that supports the notion that he wasn’t really looking for the truth as he had claimed to be doing early in the book, but was instead wanting to help Heironimus look credible to the reader was over Greg’s so-called seeing of a reflection in the creature’s right eye. Long said that he saw a light spot in the inner corner of the creature’s right eye socket and believed it to be the sun’s reflection off the glass eye that Heironimus alleged to have given Patterson to glue into place on the fake head portion of the suit. I believe Kal Korff had said it was he who noticed the light spot on the creature’s eye years earlier, but regardless, it was Greg Long who brought the observation to everyone’s attention in the book and on TV.
Without so much as seeking a professional opinion, Long made it appear as if he had discovered proof positive that Heironimus must have been telling the truth about being in the suit in the Patterson/Gimlin film. That the tale Heironimus told about giving Patterson one of his glass eyes to glue into the eye socket of the suit was the cause of this light spot that Long was seeing on the creature in the film. The image that Greg Long used on the Jeff Rense show in support of his new alleged revelation in support for the veracity of Bob Heironimus can be seen below.
An artifact on the film frame that Greg Long claimed
to be a sunlight reflection off a prosthetic glass eye
In this next example, I show an enlargement of the same image. Close observation doesn’t show us just a single light spot in the corner of the creature’s right eye socket, but rather numerous light spots all over the film frame. What Long appears to have done was see an artifact of many that were all over the frame and said that because one landed on the eye that it must be the sun reflecting off the glass eye of Bob Heironimus. Once again Greg Long seemed to be reaching out for anything he could come up with to try and make Heironimus’s story appear credible. By Long not seeking the advice of more qualified people than he to review his observations only hurt Long’s credibility as an unbiased on thorough investigator in my view.
High magnification brings out the many more artifacts that
were randomly scattered across the film frame
Greg Long tries to come across as if this is exactly what one would expect to have happen when talking about a round glass surface. What Long never tells his reader is that even if it had really been a light reflection seen in the eye … it had nothing to do with having to be a prosthetic eye. In fact, a natural eye can reflect light, as well. Below is one such example. Below is a photo that I took of a male silverback gorilla in Tampa, Florida. The photo was taken on a bright sunny day much like that seen in the Patterson/Gimlin film. In this instance - the reflective angle was just right that both eyes showed signs of reflective glare from the sunlight, thus Greg Long’s notion that his seeing a light spot on the right eye of the creature in the Patterson/Gimlin film was due to it being a prosthetic glass eye is flawed. The more exposure given to the animal, the more noticeable the reflective glare on the eyes will become.
Reflective glare seen on the eyes of a gorilla
There were several places where Long was way out of his field and showing signs of leading a witch hunt. (pages 376 to 379) Long made a reference to the creature putting it’s heel down first as it walked along and told how this is just what Bob Heironimus does when he walks. I personally don’t think there is an upright walking hominoid that doesn’t put its heel down first when stepping forward. It’s been said that runners will move along on the balls of their feet and this is true, but in this instance we’re talking about an upright bipedal creature that is merely walking across a sandbar. Long gives no scientific data as to why a bipedal creature would not place his heel down first when walking along, nor does he cite any special reason why the heel striking the ground first would only be attributed to something Bob Heironimus does. It looks as though Greg Long’s modus operandi is to imply and then move on without explaining his reasoning for saying what he does. I had to ask myself why Long didn't address how Heironimus would be able to lift his feet up behind him as he walk to where the soles of the foot would be vertical to the ground at the end of each stride. And not only lift the foot that high, but also do it as smoothly as pedaling a bicycle. Other things Long should have looked at was the position of the sole of the foot when the ball and toes are still touching the ground. Before the creature’s forefoot and toes come off the ground, the animal has the remaining sole of its foot in a vertical position. Long should have addressed whether or not Bob Heironimus could walk with his stepping leg turned as far outward at the end of its stride as the subject on the Patterson/Gimlin film while having it at turned back inward in a knock-kneed position when it swings through to the next step. I am guessing that none of these things were ever noticed by Long because he’d never studied the film well enough to have seen these sorts of things occurring.
The Sasquatch walks with a high back step and in a knock-kneed position as it strides along.
Another instance of erred supposition on Long’s part was his thinking that the creature must have been standing still when the filming started by the position of it’s feet. I should probably tell everyone that there are many films of people walking where if you stop at the right frame they will look to be standing still. The Patterson film ran at 16 frames per second. The second frame in the Patterson film shows the creature in motion, thus it is inconceivable to think that Patterson started filming with Heironimus standing still and both the camera and Heironimus started moving at the same time within a 1/16th of a second time frame. Once again Long implies something that he has no evidence to support what he has just said. For that matter, there is no sign that Greg Long ever consulted anyone more qualified than he to see if he could substantiate what he thought he was seeing on the Patterson/Gimlin film. One of the most pitiful attempts at photo and film interpretation came when Greg Long and his wife were looking at the feet of the creature. I believe it was Long’s wife on page 382 who had mentioned the feet and their shape difference when comparing frames 61 and 323. I didn’t mind so much that Greg had said something about the creature stepping over a log in frame 61 when in reality the creature was never close to the log. You see, in photography there is a term called the ‘foreshortening effect’ that most people are unaware of. The further away things are from the camera lens the more they will look closer than they really are. The more zoom the lens has, the more pronounced this effect becomes. In frame 61, the forest background appears very close to the creature, but if one looks at the photo overlooking the film site that I used earlier in this article or the one on page 56 of a book by Chris Murphy called “Meet the Sasquatch”, the overhead view of the creature’s path as seen from up on the hillside shows just how far the animal really was from the forest background. The fact that the log was never seen on the camera side of the creature should have told Long that it was never stepped over by the creature. Regardless, the silliest attempt at photo and film interpretation came when Long and his wife were comparing what they had thought was the left and right foot of the creature as seen in frames 61 and 323. They went on and on about how the left and right foot was shaped differently as if the artistic Patterson had made a mistake that they had somehow uncovered. They even discussed how the arch of the foot was on the wrong side in one of the frames. The problem with all of this that they were looking at the same foot in both frames – THE RIGHT FOOT! This means that the shape differences they had seen in the foot between frames was not because of anything Patterson did or didn’t do, but because of their not knowing enough about the film, reflective angles, and the foots anatomy among a few other things that one should have studied and became familiar with before trying to investigate the subject. And at the very least, Greg Long should have sought someone more knowledgeable than himself who could have verified or corrected their observations, but Long chose not to. Both “right feet” are seen in frames 61 and 323. (see below)
The right foot is off the ground in both frame 61 and 323
The blunder with involving Phillip MorrisAlmost as if a last minute brainstorm, Greg Long decided to include a chapter about an old time costume maker/carnival act who had claimed that one of his suits was used in the famous Northern California Bigfoot film. Long says in the book on page 443, that Phillip Morris stated on WBT-AM, a radio station out of Charlotte, NC, that he had sold a gorilla suit to Roger Patterson and that it was used in the famous Patterson/Gimlin Bigfoot film. This revelation wasn’t made known anytime over the past three decades since the film was taken in 1967, but rather only after Bob Heironimus had sought his 15 minutes fame. The date Long gives for Morris going on the radio show and declaring that it was he who furnished the suit for the famous Bigfoot film was August 16, 2002. Phillip Morris had this to say to Long about his first viewing of the creature on the Patterson/Gimlin film … “It’s the things we’ve been talking about, the feet, the arms, the hood, the fur …. And I knew the shape of my suit. I recognized my suit because I had just made it.” No one should forget that last sentence Morris had said and I think it’s worth repeating … “I recognized my suit because I had just made it.” One might wonder why if Morris had really seen one of his suits in such a famous piece of film footage, illusion or hoax, that he wouldn't have wanted to keep his copy of the alleged shipping order to Patterson for a future reference, but he didn’t. Phillip Morris has nothing to support his claim about sending Roger Patterson one of his gorilla suits. Anyone who had read Bob Heironimus’s description of the suit he allegedly wore would have to wonder how it was that Morris thought the creature on the Patterson/Gimlin film was a man in one of his suits – especially one he had just made! Was it that anything seen with fur on it qualified itself in Morris’s mind as being something he had made? Bob Heironimus had told Long that the suit he wore was made from a skinned horse that then had hair from an old fur coat glued onto it. Heironimus also said there were no zippers or buckles on this alleged suit. The upper and lower trunk was in two sections. Heironimus told Greg Long how Patterson had made feet and attached them to the costume and that Roger had also created a well sculpted head for the suit over the top of a football helmet. So one might wonder just what it was about the alleged suit that had obviously been completely overhauled according to Bob Heironimus … that made Phillip Morris say that he saw right off that it was the very costume he had just made for Patterson.
I was puzzled as to why Greg Long never batted an eye at this obvious inconsistency and he took everything Morris had told him as some sort of revelation to this incredible story that Long thought he was unraveling. Morris went on to say that Patterson wanted to know how to hide the light colored skin around a man’s eyes inside the fake head. Morris claimed that he told Roger to use some black makeup around the eyes. (A nice touch to Morris’s story I had thought.) For the true hoax believer who thinks Patterson was this creative artistic genius that could make with his own two hands such an elaborate realistic costume as seen on the Patterson/Gimlin film, then they surely had to believe that Roger would have known how to darken the light colored skin around a man’s eyes so it not to be seen through the eye holes of a Morris gorilla suit.
I might also say that anyone who looks at the gorilla suit Morris was making at the time … that having a man’s light skin showing around the insides of eye holes was the least of his problems in trying to get someone to believe they were looking at a real animal. I recall as a young child seeing that Morris style of suit used on the old 'Three Stooges' shorts and on comedy shows and not once did I ever believe it to be a real animal.
Phillip Morris and his gorilla suit in 1967- compared to the Patterson creature
Morris went on to tell Long how Patterson had called Phillip back and requested some additional gorilla fur be sent to him. (It would seem to me that had Roger of actually acquired one of Morris’s suits, then there should have been more than enough hair on it already to downsize the costume to fit Bob Heironimus.) Morris said this on page 450 about the suits he made … ‘the gorilla suits were cut with long legs and long arms, making the suit loose so that almost anyone could wear it’. On top of all this – Morris had said earlier in his interview with Long that extra patches of fur were sent out with the original suit.
Then Morris went on to say about the Patterson/Gimlin film that the guy who had worn this suit must have had on his clothes underneath it because it looked to fit really tight on him. Maybe now would be a good time to show what Bob Heironimus looked like at the time of the movie and compare this to the Morris gorilla suit. One may want to look closely at the legs and waist of Heironimus and wonder how it was that Morris could say on page 456 that he saw a billfold or car keys bulging through one of his loose ‘one size fits all’ gorilla suits allegedly being used in the Patterson/Gimlin film?
Bob Heironimus in 1967 compared to a gorilla costume
Phillip Morris had stated this to Long about the alleged suit on the Bluff Creek film, “the suit itself created the bulk of the gorilla, I mean from the appearance on the outside. But the guy in the suit was pretty good size. He must have also been heavyset because he really filled that suit out. The suit was not made to fit tight on him, but it fit tight on him.” Morris was partially correct for the creature in the Patterson/Gimlin film shows enormous bulk and width. I ask that people look once again at the baggy Morris suit and tell me how Bob Heironimus could possibly have filled it out in the way Morris describes? Morris had committed himself by initially saying that the Bluff Creek subject was someone in his suit and that any shape or body movements was due to the large size of the man wearing the tight fitting suit.
Gorilla suit compared to the Bluff Creek subject
The Bigfoot Community had been hoping for quite some time to get Phillip Morris to supply one of his gorilla suits so Bob Heironimus could prove to the world that he was indeed the creature seen in the Patterson/Gimlin film. Just when most Bigfoot enthusiast had all but given up on this ever happening … such a spectacle seems to have occurred recently with Bob Heironimus actually trying on one of Phillip Morris’s gorilla suits. National Geographic was on hand to witness the event and it appears that the show's Producer, Noel Stockstader, was not impressed by what he saw.
The following is a recap of a conversation that Stockstader had with Jeff Meldrum, a Professor of Anthropology at Idaho University …. Meldrum writes, “I just spoke yesterday with Noel, the producer for the NGTV special. He was surprised that news of their interview with Morris and Heironimus had spread via the local media so rapidly. He was quite unimpressed with the costume and said it clearly had nothing to do with the Patterson film. Bob H. did don the suit and it was a poor-fitting spectacle. There were caveats offered that Roger must have modified it extensively with horsehide and such. The bottom line for Noel was that either it was real or that Roger accomplished a truly extraordinary and masterful hoax.”
The fiasco of having Bob Heironimus try and duplicate what is seen on the Patterson film was a disaster waiting to happen in my view. There were several things that Long, Morris and Heironimus didn’t know about the creature on the Patterson/Gimlin film or they surely would have quit while they felt they were ahead. They didn’t know or appreciate just how high the soles of the creature’s feet rise off the ground at the end of its leg swing. Frame 72 is one such example that shows the sole of the foot vertical with the ground. Frame 310 shows the front toes and the ball of the creature’s foot on the ground while the sole of the foot has already become vertical to the ground.
Professor Jeff Meldrum states that the only way to achieve this with a human being would be to have a special hinged device on the fake foot that would make it appear the toes are still supporting weight on the ground while the actual sole of the foot of someone in a costume could be vertical to the ground. Meldrum gives the reason for this as being that a human’s arches are too rigid to allow our foot to bend in such a way while walking. The problem that this causes is that Heironimus didn’t incorporate such a device into his story.
Greg Long spent considerable time addressing some idea that Roger had Bob Heironimus in some sort of bed slipper, thus it is a little too late now to be trying to do damage control on the story Heironimus had told. I mentioned earlier in this article how Morris thought the guy in the suit was a big heavy man because of the way he filled out the costume. But after the poor fitting spectacle was seen by National Geographic, Morris then started saying that Patterson must have made some modifications to the suit to get the obvious bulk that is seen on the Bigfoot film. Let’s think about what Morris was said to have suggested. Below is a comparison shot of Jim McClarin walking the creature’s tracks that were still visible on the sandbar at the time Jim and John Green did their film recreation. Jim McClarin was five inches taller than Bob Heironimus, but that isn't important in this case for I am only talking about the distance each subject and their surroundings were from the camera. There could not have been more than a two inch difference in the skeletal hip width between these two men, yet the creature in the Patterson film had massive upper thighs that are about as big as McClarin’s waist.
Jim McClarin walking the creature’s path across the film site
Phillip Morris would simply suggest that the thin legs of Bob Heironimus must have had his thighs padded up to get the great bulk seen on the creature in the famous Bigfoot film, but here is the problem that Morris and Long didn’t think of … The creature shows a nonrestrictive freedom of motion in it’s gait. In other words, its hips are wide enough to allow those massive thighs to show fluent motion as it glides along the ground. What would happen if Heironimus of had his thighs padded in such a way to achieve what is seen on the Patterson/Gimlin film? What would happen would be little different than someone wearing an attack dog training suit. When a person of Bob Heironimus's narrow build through the hips takes on width of the massive thighs that the creature had in the Patterson/Gimlin film, they would find that their once free range of motion would suddenly become dramatically prohibited.
Attack dog trainer wearing heavily padded arms and thighs
If given enough padding through the thighs one will merely waddle as they try to move along. The reason for this is as I said before – their pelvis is no longer wide enough to allow their inner thighs to move freely. The creature on the Patterson film which has thighs as wide as McClarin’s waist shows no restriction in movement what-so-ever. I can only imagine how Morris may have felt when he was at a loss to explain how Long’s star witness was unable to make his suit look believable. Memories of the O.J. Simspon trial popped into my head as I looked over the pictures of the new Morris suit. As I studied the images I was thinking … I wonder what people would have thought if Christopher Darden had asked Bob Heironimus to put on the suit to see if he filled it out accordingly, only to then to find that what he had accomplished was to present a baggy spectacle for everyone to see. I could just hear Johnny Cochran telling the jury in his final summation how “If the suit doesn’t fit, then Heironimus is full of ****!”
The new Morris suit
It seems only fitting that Bob Heironimus is now being exposed as the fraud that he is. Did he really think that he could create a story that would be tight enough to withstand scrutiny by those who knew the subject matter better than he obviously he did? There has since surfaced some evidence that explains how Bob Heironimus came up with the idea to say he was the guy in a monkey suit in the famous Patterson/Gimlin film of 1967. I recently had spoken to a man named William DeHollander who had some information that seemed to explain the true motive behind Heironimus's claim.
It seems that DeHollander's wife worked at Central College University and had become friends with a woman named Denise Coffey. When William had first heard that an unnamed Yakima man was saying that he was involved in the Patterson/Gimlin film taken at Bluff Creek in 1967, DeHollander asked Denise if she had heard the story coming out of Yakima? (William had known that Denise was from Yakima and maybe had already heard about this mystery man.) Denise looked at William DeHollander and rolled her eyes and said you must be talking about Bob Heironimus. Denise went on to tell William that her husband (Neil), Bob Heironimus, and Barry Woodard use to sit around at her house and drink and tell stories. Denise had heard the guys laughing and going on how funny it would be if Heironimus told everyone that he was the guy in a monkey suit in the Bigfoot film that Roger Patterson shot in Northern California. They talked about how much they could sell such a story to "The Sun" newspaper for.
The Sun being a tabloid newspaper and the price Denise remembered them talking about was $50,000. DeHollander placed the time of Denise telling him about Heironimus at nine years ago. Denise's story truely explains why Heironimus wanted to discuss talking to his lawyer before doing an interview with Greg Long. When Long first talked to Heironimus, Bob had told him that he had nothing to do with Patterson and Gimlin's Bigfoot film. It was only after Long opened the door about there being a Bigfoot documentary Patterson was said to have been making prior to the Bluff Creek footage that Heironimus was willing to consider talking to Long and only after Bob consulted his attorney (Barry Woodard) who happened to be one of the men at Denise Coffey's house when all the talk about making up a story to sell the Sun had been taking place. It seems to me that Greg Long's first hunch about Bob Herionimus was correct. Long writes about his first contact with Heironimus on page 152, "When I finished, I concluded that I didn't believe Bob Heironimus ..."
I could go on and on about the mistakes Long made in his so-called investigation and the inconsistencies in the things he alleged was evidence proving that the Patterson/Gimlin film was a hoax, but how far does one have to go to show that Long’s investigation was a sham. When Morris mentioned there being a line on the subjects back in the Patterson/Gimlin film and suggested to Long that this was his zipper line on the suit, Long never said a word about his star "Heironimus" saying that the suit he wore had no zippers or buckles. Instead, Greg Long brings Kal Korff's name up once again when Morris mentioned that the feet he made for his suits didn't match the toe pattern on the foot seen on the film. Morris is correct - his fake foot did not look anything like the Patterson creature's foot. Below is the Morris costume foot.
Morris costume foot
What Long then did was draw from what Morris had said and then told the reader about Kal Korff saying in the "World's Greatest Hoaxes:Secrets Finally Revealed" that the feet on the Patterson creature do not match the tracks seen on the film site. What Morris was talking about had nothing to do with the tracks left behind at the Patterson/Gimlin film site. I might also add that Korff in typical fashion didn't know what he was talking about because he didn't know the evidence well enough to speak intelligently about it. Korff didn't take into consideration that the reflective angle to the foot in the Patterson film, which is in motion and blurred most of the time, will effect on how it is seen. Korff never considered that a heavily padded foot will expand when all that massive weight of the animal comes down on it, thus altering it's shape from what it looked like while lifted into the air with a zero amount of weight on it. But this is Kal Korff we are talking about.
This is the same Kal Korff who mentioned the line running down the creature's back in the Bluff Creek film had to be a zipper because animals do not have such lines as this on their backs. Much in the same way Korff told people that the little girl in the Zapruder film was wearing pants when anyone looking at her bare legs can see this wasn't so, anyone who would take a moment to do a Internet search for photos of a Gorilla would see that they also have the same type of line running up and down on their backs, as well. The well developed 'erector spinus muscles' become so overly developed on a gorilla that it makes the shadowed depression of their spinal line stand out. Body builders have accomplished the same look.
Below is a photograph that I took of a male gorilla. Only the great investigator Kal Korff would have made such a ridiculous claim without bothering to check his facts first. Like with the Kennedy Assassination that Korff claims to have solved single handedly, he’s shown us that he used the same sloppy research practices to declare that the Patterson/Gimlin film was a hoax!
Male gorilla with well developed erector spinae muscles
forming a dark shaded line down the center of it’s back
If anyone still has any doubt as to Long’s motive and they think that he wasn't on a witch hunt from the very beginning, let me share just one more thing worth your consideration.
On page 442, Greg Long wrote about the death of Ray Wallace. Wallace owned a construction company that was involved in building a road in Northern California in the late 50’s. Long reminds us that it was Jerry Crew who was the bulldozer operator for Wallace who had found giant tracks on the ground around Wallace’s construction equipment.
Long goes on to tell the reader how after Ray died, the Wallace family told how Ray would go around pulling pranks on people by wearing some wooden fake feet carvings he had in his possession. Greg Long ends the Wallace story by saying, “And so the Bigfoot film legend, which enjoyed a long and lively run, is now completely dead.”
In typical fashion, Greg Long didn't even bother to check any of the basic facts surrounding the actual subject matter. I have to assume that Long never knew that because such large tracks were being found on the Wallace construction site, Ray was reported to be having trouble keeping workers on the job. Maybe I should point out that construction company’s work on a deadline and it makes little sense to me that Ray Wallace would want to sabotage his own living.
Furthermore, Greg Long never bothered to look at the Wallace foot carving to see if it even matched the Jerry Crew tracks that were being found on the Wallace construction site. Well, I am here to say that some of us have done this and to give Ray Wallace and his family the benefit of the doubt,
I scaled each and every known available foot casting equally on my computer so they would all have the same length and width dimensions and I then compared them to the Ray Wallace fake wooden carving.
Knowing that a fake foot is like a rubber stamp, it should be easy to see if any of the known right foot castings from Northern California showed the same toe pattern as the fake Wallace carving of the same right foot. I did a side by side comparison of each foot casting and I offer six of those comparisons here for everyone's viewing.
Any laymen can see the obvious differences and Greg Long should have been no exception to the rule, but first he had to want to look at them. One would think that someone claiming to be only interested in the truth would have done this before writing a single word about Ray Wallace, but not Greg Long.
Long accepted the Wallace story because like with the tale Heironimus told – Greg wanted to believe that the Patterson/Gimlin film was a hoax. One might want to pay close attention to the Jerry Crew track that the news media had said started it all as a result of Ray Wallace stomping around his construction site in his fake wooden carvings.
I say shame on the Wallace family and shame on those who blindly accepted their claim without so much as looking at the evidence.
The Ray Wallace foot carving compared to Bigfoot
track castings made in Northern California and BC
Greg Long apparently heard only what he wanted to hear and ignored many of the inconsistencies in his witness’s story in order to validate in his mind that Bob Heironimus was being honest about the things he had said.
I end this article by passing on a saying that best fits the short comings of the Greg Long book and his investigation.
This particular saying comes from a long time Bigfoot investigator and friend named Rene Dahinden who has since passed on, but had left some valuable advice behind..."Everyone has a right to their own opinion, but no one has a right to be wrong about the facts. Without the facts, your opinion is of no value." - Rene Dahinden, August 1999...
Copyright Bill Miller, November 2004
Follow-up to "Who's Hoaxing Who Over "The Making of Bigfoot?"
Written by Bill Miller
The problem with any inquiry is in getting qualified people to accurately carry out the investigation in a responsible and thourough way. You may recall the Ray Wallace story of a year or so ago. The News people from some major and local networks ran the Ray Wallace story and how he was the one responsible for the Bigfoot tracks showing up in Northern California. As an investigator and somewhat of a philosopher myself, I did what no one else was willing to take the time to do and I compared the fake wooden Ray Wallace right foot to that of the alleged casts it was said to have created. I then compared it to each and every foot casting in existence that was taken out of Northern California in the late 50's and 60's and not a single track matched the Ray Wallace fake foot. I know all too well what you mean by people being gullible and I will offer you some more examples of this concerning Bob Heironimus and his alleged participation in the Roger Patterson Bigfoot movie of 1967. Above is the right fake wooden foot that Ray Wallace was said to have used to hoax the people in Northern California in 1958 as told by the Wallace family...starting with Bull Dozer operator Jerry Crew. As a philosopher looking at the comparison above-do you see the mistake the news media made by not at least comparing the Wallace fake foot to the tracks they were being claimed to have made? Like those he criticized about not conducting a proper investigation in the Patterson Film, Greg Long didn't bother to check this out either before writing about his acceptance of the Ray Wallace story in his book. While there were many signs of fabrication in the Bob Heironimus story, please allow me to share with you in short order three of the more interesting problems I found. Bob Heironimus was interviewed at different times by Greg Long. On page 346 of Long's book "The Making of Bigfoot", Bob said that when he first tried the suit on that he was able to see through the holes in the alleged fake head. He said "I looked through two slits...I couldn't see out real good because my eyes were set back real good." Long then asked Bob once again, "You could see out two slits?" Bob Heironimus again replied, "Right. They were about this far from my eyes." When Long and Bob get to talking later on about Bob's glass eye, it then is incorporated into the story by Heironimus by Heironimus, so I ask you...if Bob Heironimus had a glass eye and one of them was glued into the eye hole of the suit, then how was he able to see through the two slits with his eyes (plural)? Let me share with you the glaring of the alleged glass eye that Long spoke about in his book and on at least one taped interview. In the picture I am placing here for you to see there is indeed a bright spot over the right eye. You may also notice there are such spots all over the frame both on and off the creature. These are artifacts on the film and have nothing to do with a glass eye. As I recall, it was on Greg Long's lead about seeing a reflection on the creature's right eye that Heironimus then mentioned there being a glass eye over the right slit that he had said before he could see out of with both eyes. Long seems to have failed to see this slip on Bob's part or else if he did, he didn't mention it either. It might also be worth mentioning that there is no way Patterson would have known the film would be over exposed and that it would keep both eye sockets from being visible. As you can see in the image above...both eyes are looking at the camera, yet the story Bob Heironimus later incorporated about the use of a glass eye was so that with the right eye only being seen on film would not allow an empty hole to be seen. Being that both eyes are seen when the animal turns and looks at the camera, then Bob's story...like that about the horse not knowing how to buck for the cause of Patterson shaking the film when he already has Roger on foot, has been invented on a false observation on the part of both Long and Heironimus. Another instance where Bob Heironimus seems to be thinking on his feet and not actually citing from memory is when he said that just before the filming started at Bluff Creek. Patterson and Gimlin had helped him up after he had just put on the lower part of this alleged costume. On page 348 Heironimus is quoted as saying "We dismounted and unloaded the sack...they kind of helped me up and put the top on."
Now on page 349 is when Heironimus gets caught making things up as he goes...Bob Heironimus says, "Roger said, 'Just go over there and stand there in that section, and when we are ready to film, you just start walking.'" Next, Heironimus says to Long, "Here's where they started the footage. Then, right in here is where they started moving the camera, you know, shaking it, as I was walking." It appears in this instant that Heironimus starts thinking on his feet. Greg Long then asked Heironimus, "How do you know they were shaking the camera?" Heironimus replies, "That horse didn't know how to buck." You see, Bob Heironimus recalled the official story of Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin being on horseback when they first saw the creature, but Bob Heironimus forgets he has already committed himself to Patterson being on foot after he told Long they had all dismounted their horses and Roger assisted Gimlin in helping him (Heironimus) on with his alleged costume. Heironimus had now incorporated Patterson being on a horse to justify the shaking of the film at a time he has already said the men were on foot. Greg Long never catches this error or if he did, he never mentions it to Heironimus. The next fabrication on the part of Bob Heironimus is exposed by the film itself. On page 352 of Long's book we hear Heironimus say that the suit he wore had hair glued on it in places, while bare patches were left open on other parts so to make the creature look like it was shedding its fur. Heironimus takes it up a notch by making some references to what is seen on the Patterson film as the 'slick parts' on the alleged suit where he says the fur was missing. An example of this can be seen on page 380 of the book where Long shows Frame 61. Ftrame 352 is another example of this when the entire left side of the creature's upper body looks to be void of fur. There is seen on the Patterson film what is called the "flaring effect" when a film has been over exposed. The spots Heironimus spoke about being absent of fur on the Patterson film were nothing more than the glaring of the sun rays off the creature's coat. Heironimus obviously didn't study the Patterson film to any extent or he would have noticed that there are frames that show these places without the flaring effect and the fur is of uniform thickness in all the areas that looked like slick spots only frames earlier. One such frame (323) is ironically shown on page 381 of Long's book. There can be no doubt that Bob Heironimus took what he thought he was seeing on the Patterson film as missing hair and incorporated into his tale of wearing a fake suit at Bluff Creek. I could go on about why I cannot understand why Roger Patterson would need to buy a costume only to then cut off the head and make another one, remove the feet and replace it with his own version, take out a zipper, cut the trunk in two pieces, shave off all the hair and then glue on his own fur, plus make the necessary alterations needed to fit Bob Heironimus so well (without ever doing a fitting I might add) so to see muscle movement under the fur even with Heironimus claiming to still be fully clothed inside the alleged suit when it appears that Roger is being said to have started from the ground up. When one thinks about what Bob Heironimus has said here, they should ask themselves what would Patterson need Philip Morris for? About everything Morris said about recognizing the Patterson creature as being his suit seems to have been debunked by Heironimus, himself. Morris thinks he sees a zipper line on the creature's back, but Long doesn't tell Morris that his obervation is a faulty one because Heironimus said the upper part of the suit went on "like putting on a T-shirt." (page 345)Could it be that Morris is not telling the truth? When Morris makes references to the Patterson creature as looking like someone in one of his suits, then it certainly appears he has very poor eyesight or is lying. While I cannot explain why Morris would think the Patterson creature looks anything like one of his suits, there is a small possibility that Morris did send one of his suits to a man in Washington, but it wasn't Patterson. Ray Wallace made a film of his wife wearing a gorilla suit and it looks a lot like. if not exactly like one of the Philip Morris suits. Sending gorilla suits out to private individuals would most likely have been a rare thing to have done because of there not being a demand for such a costume in the hands of private individuals and I only heard Morris mention sending a suit to a man in Washington on one occasion. I am placing a photo of a Morris suit above, along with suit worn by Mrs. Wallace. Yes, people can be gullible and having now had your eyes opened to just some of the things that Bob Heironimus incorporated into his story either systematically to fit Long's leads or mistakenly by things he thought he saw on the Patterson film...one has to now wonder just who has been the gullible one all along!
Bill Miller
Bigfoot researcher/investigator
