Most of this post will be devoted to the Rick Dyer case, which is presently the hottest issue in Bigfootery. It is mostly only being covered on my blog, where I try to present a balanced picture of both hypotheses, the Hoax Hypothesis and the Real Body Hypothesis, although I myself feel that this is probably a real body.
Nevertheless, the Hoax Hypothesis is still an excellent hypothesis to take until this thing is confirmed by science. Randy Filipovic runs Bigfoottracker.com, which is a site dedicated to the Hoax Hypothesis. They also have a low opinion of Dyer in general; briefly, they consider him to be a lowlife. Dyer himself takes pride in being an “asshole” and a bad boy, so I am not sure he bothered by people who think he is a scumbag.
I do not waste much time of Dyer’s character or psychological makeup, having gone in depth into those issues on earlier posts. There’s really nothing more to say, and the vast majority of folks in Bigfootery share the same opinion of Dyer, so it’s preaching to the choir anyway. Most Bigfooters even have a pretty good idea of his psychological makeup, which is interesting for a group of laypersons who are not clinicians. Bottom line is everyone knows what Rick Dyer is all about.
I do commend Randy for covering the Hoax Hypothesis and for revealing Dyer’s significant character flaws and bad behavior as this is all part of the story. Almost all other Bigfoot sites are refusing to cover the story, and most Bigfoot sites in Facebook are also refusing to cover it. Bigfoot Forums, to their eternal shame, is also refusing to cover it. Rick is now making national news and even news across the globe, so it is essential that our field report on this extremely significant story.
I have always said that even if this is a hoax, it is a great story, and this seems to be the position that Randy takes. I happen to think this would be the greatest Bigfoot hoax of all time if it turned out to be fake, but others may wish to differ with me on that.
Dyer is destroying Bigfootery. This is the claim of many posters over at Randy’s site. Personally, I think this is dubious as there is really nothing to destroy. Our field already has a reputation lower than mud, and Dyer hardly lowers the bar any further. If anything, Dyer is pretty much the quintessential Bigfooter, much to our shame. I actually think that even if this is a hoax it will be good for the field, because a lot more people are talking about Bigfoot once this story got going. In Bigfootery, any publicity is good publicity.
This entire field has been ridden with endless hoaxes and con games, and Rick’s current one would merely be another in an endless trail. In short, I think think the charge that Rick is destroying Bigfootery is very much overdrawn and is basically hyperbole. I would urge these people not to worry about it. Another thing is that if this is a hoax, it will not be bad for the field, as 95%+ of the field has stated that this is a hoax from Day One. The only people, if any, to suffer, will be folks like Christopher Noel and I who have been saying that Rick has a real Bigfoot. But even Christopher and I will ride this out.
Anyway, onto the story!
Dyer conferences delayed until December? This is a rumor that is flying around and it is due to a video Rick made saying that the conference would be delayed until the end of the Bigfoot tour. However, a Team Tracker source informs me that this is actually a misunderstanding, and what he means is that the conference will take place after the first leg of the tour which is currently being booked. The source told me that the presser may take place as early as March.
Why the delay? Team Trackers sources tell me that there are 120 different people who want to be there at the press conference, basically anybody who had anything to do with Hank from the very start until the present day. In addition, many more of the science people want to participate and more science work is being done even at this moment.
An argument for the delay. This is argument centers around some sources close to this story who believe that the investors are withholding crucial scientific evidence from Dyer. Why would they do this? Because Rick and the investors supposedly had a big fight over possession of the Bigfoot, and Rick only won possession of it in September, supposedly in a court case as he told a reporter.
Due to the bad blood, the investors are supposedly withholding crucial scientific evidence necessary for Rick’s tour to be successful, so they are getting in a final Carpathian thrust at the very end just to spite him. Just let him try to take his unverified dummy on a tour of the nation! Haha! Without verification, presumably, Hank would be much less of an attraction. This way Rick’s tour would flop and he would make little money and Hank would be returned to the gloating investors in December.
However, for a number of reasons, I do not think that this theory is true. For one, I do not believe that any scientific data is being withheld from Rick by the investors. Instead, I believe that there is still some scientific data that Rick is trying to round up and collate together.
The decision to postpone the conference is probably at the behest of the investors, who properly assume that the more scientific faces and data they have at the presser, the stronger their case will be that Hank is real. Presumably, this delay has to be upsetting Rick, who would probably like to get the pressers out of the way as quickly as possible in order to maximize his profits from the tour. Every day delaying the pressers is a day he could be out touring and making money.
However, Rick has obviously has difficulties with time preference and delaying gratification as is obvious to anyone who follows. So Rick bristles at the delay and says he is going to start the tour without the conference so he can start making money right now. He also believes he can hit markets two times, once before the conference and once afterwards and maximize his income that way.
By the same token, the investors no doubt get a cut of all of the profits from Rick’s tour, so they would no doubt like this presser to take place as soon as possible too to maximize their incomes.
There are also those who know good data about Hank who are also upset about the presser delay. They are getting restless and they are hinting that they are going to violate their NDA’s with Rick and start spilling the beans even before the conferences start. Indeed, the CT and MRI scans are already floating about on the web. I have not been able to get them, but other bloggers have.
So Dyer, the investors and science team are all getting antsy about the presser and want it to happen as soon as possible. We all know that Rick is an incredibly greedy and mammon-obsessed fellow, so that’s primarily the reason for his anxiousness.
Hank DNA results leaked. Initial results of the DNA results for the Hank specimen have been leaked. A source close to Team Tracker, stated, while framing his statement as “speculation” no doubt to keep from voiding his NDA, that the DNA shows that Hank is “an early human hybrid,” and that Hank is a result of some other relict hominid which is unknown breeding with Homo Sapiens quite some time ago.
This ties in almost exactly with Dr. Melba Ketchum’s much-derided findings that have been roundly dismissed as laughable by the scientific community. I also thought Ketchum was right however poorly she handled her roll-out and I hope that one day she can be redeemed. In a recent interview, Ketchum said tragically that her Bigfoot work had “ruined her career.” This is very sad and it means that this woman no matter what we think of her personality took one for the team and nearly sacrificed her career for our great field. And for that, we should all praise Ketchum, and I have a feeling that like Rick Dyer, Ketchum will also go down in history for better or for worse.
Facebook Find Bigfoot are indeed the new Rick Dyer investors. I reported this earlier, but Rick said that FB/FB had nothing to do with Team Tracker. However, my sources are certain that they are the new investors at least in part and that Rick is lying (surprise) when he says that they have noting to do with TT. My source told me that FB/FB probably told Rick to say that.
The FB/FB guys and a mysterious physician. There is a rumor that the FB/FB duo brought an MD with them when they went to see Hank in order to verify the specimen as real and he did in fact do just that. I have been unable to verify that rumor.
Who has verified Hank? Of the major players in the Bigfoot community who have inspected Hank in order to verify his authenticity, the only names I know of are the FB/FB pair. There may be up to six other Bigfooters who have looked at the body, but I have no idea who they are.
Has Christopher Noel checked out Hank? Noel has not yet inspected Hank; this is a false rumor that is going around.
Have any scientists verified Hank as real? There is no good, hard evidence that any scientists have been among those who tried to verify Hank recently, however, if I were conjecturing, I would say that there may very well have been one or more scientists out to look at the body.
Accusations that Hank’s feel have a bubble from an acrylic mold which proves that Hank is a fake prop. These allegations stem from Randy’s site and I do not know how valid they are. I refer you to Randy’s site to review that evidence.
Dr. Jeff Meldrum chimes in on the hands and feet of Hank. Meldrum has reportedly posted leaked photos of Hank’s hands and feet along with commentary stating that they are obvious fakes via a model. Meldrum has already stated emphatically that Hank is a fake prop.
Taxidermist speaks out against Hank. World famous taxidermist Russell Knight is interviewed via the excellent Crypto Crew website. The interviewer is Jennifer Caywood, and I know her. I thought she was sort of a regular woman about time average person type and I was not sure how well she could handle a high-profile interview. Surprisingly she did an excellent job of interviewing Knight, who is based out of Alaska.
Knight states that Hank is an obvious hoax via a prop and offers to have Dyer offer Knight and other taxidermists the chance to check out Hank. However, I believe Dyer has turned them down on the basis that they are “haters.”
He repeats the charge that Hank’s hair is fake fur made by Meldrum and my friend at the Smithsonian. So now there are three experts insisting that that is fake fur on Hank. Knight also says that no taxidermist would do such a terrible job as was done on Hank. This charge was also repeated by my Smithsonian friend and Meldrum. I would have to agree somewhat here, and personally I would give the taxidermy job on Hank a C-. I do not know who stuffed Hank. Kudos to the Crypto Crew site, one of the best Bigfoot site, for at least covering this story. Thomas Marcum is one of the better fellows in this highly sleazy business.
Doug Hanson denies that Hank is real. Hanson is one of Hollywood’s top prop makers and he has made one of the best Bigfoot suits out there. Hanson states emphatically that Hank is an obvious prop based on his knowledge of the business. I believe that he also offered to go see Hank to verify him but Dyer also turned him down for being a “hater.” However, Hanson insisted that a popular Bigfoot photo or video (I forget which) was an obvious fake and I did accept his expertise on that judgement, so I feel that this man can be wrong sometimes.
Dyer’s entertainment industry logos on his Hank van. Rick has plastered his Hank vehicle with the logos of many media companies, to wit: The National Geographic Channel, NBC, Fox News, the Discovery Channel, Facebook, Twitter , Youtube, the BBC and CNN. It turns out that these are merely the channels and websites that his Hank story has been featured on.
Many thought that these companies had purchased ad space on the Hank vehicle, but that is not the case. People also wondered why these companies did not order Rick to take these logos down, but the fact is that this happens quite often, and as long as the logos are not displayed in a sleazy venue such as a porn flick, the companies just consider it free advertising and don’t mess with the person.
Dyer claim that he had to go to court to fight the investors to get Hank back and that he won the right to get Hank back in September of last year in a court. The folks over at Randy’s blog has researched this claim and have found no evidence that Dyer was involved in any court case in the past year, so Dyer’s claim may be false.
Second body claim. As you know, Dyer now claims to have a second, whole, intact Bigfoot body. He has named it Junior and says he will unveil it soon. The name Junior is apparently after the original investor, Hank Williams Junior, the country punk star. Hank was also named after this man.
Personally, I regard this second body claim as insane, and I will believe it when I see it. Rick also claims that this body has a link with the 2008 hoax, which makes no sense at all. Rick is now rewriting history by claiming that he had a body in 2008, but the government took it, so they were forced by circumstances to make a hoax. This seems so patently ludicrous that I would not give it any credence. Nevertheless, incredibly, many Dyer believers and hangers-on actually regard this as a possibility, which just shows you how gullible they are and they will believe most any debris that rains down from Rick’s rickety mouth.
How many Bigfoots were present that night in San Antonio in 2012 when Hank was purportedly shot? Rick has been hinting around and stating off the record to friends for months now that he thinks there was more than one Bigfoot at the site that night. In fact, for months now, he has been saying that there may have been up to three Bigfoots at the site that night. We do know that these things move about generally in groups, so that is a possibility, as bizarre as it sounds. So what Rick is saying is that the Tent Video Bigfoot, the Shooting Bigfoot Bigfoot, and Hank may not all be the same creature at all. Things are very confused in this area.
Statement from a graphic artist about Hank. This statement is from an anonymous source who is a young female in her 20′s who is also an excellent graphics artist. She was a bit of a tomboy in her youth and she did a lot of hunting and even investigated taxidermy with her brother.
I have had a fair amount of experience with taxidermists, mostly when I was a young teen. My brother and I would visit the shops in our area that had a fair amount of business during hunting season. We would get scraps of deerskin- raw right off the animal- which we would use as green hide, rawhide, pelts and some we even tanned as finished leather ourselves. Some of the taxidermists would show us their operations and mounting techniques.
Now you may know that I am a Photoshop expert, and often enhance and analyze photos. So I got some photos of Hank before and after taxidermy. In the analysis, I can say that the taxidermied Hank is one and the same as the pre-taxiderm specimen.
They differ in appearance because this is not first-class taxidermy, maybe a C- if I were to grade it. However as a concession to the taxidermist , it is very hard to preserve bare skin and soft tissue such as the face and lips. The taxidermed specimen shows obvious signs of the shrinkage and wrinkling that occurs when the skin dehydrates and dessicates.
It appears that some type of pigmentation was applied to represent the natural skin-tone. I don’t know what is used currently by taxidermists, but it looks like a thin overcoat of acrylic paint or varnish in a semi-transparent wash. The pre-taxiderm Hank has a broken jaw and bloodstains on the left side. The post-taxiderm Hank (with the jawbone removed) is now symmetrical as in life, but the bloodstains on the jaw, neck and chest could not be totally removed, and appear as dark, almost black hairs.
I agree with her that the taxidermed specimen and the the earlier photo of Hank are one and the same entity.
Dyer claim that “Vegas Rob” stalked him in Las Vegas. Rick has leveled a variety of charges against the extreme haters, including stalking him, destroying his apartment, invading his apartment and getting into a fistfight with him, hanging out in a company van in the apartment parking garage on lunch break with a camera, etc. However, he says that charges were filed against someone named Vegas Rob. Yet a search of Las Vegas police records by people on Randy’s blog showed that Rick Dyer had not filed charges against any person due to the this reported harassment.
Dyer claims of making $8,200 in six hours of showing Hank in Las Vegas. Rick recently made a video stating this claim and he waved around a wad of bills to make his point. However, the folks over at Randy’s blog do not think that Rick actually made that much money.
Dyer haters siccing the IRS on Rick Dyer. Rick claims to have made $800,000 on his 2008 hoax, but that is not true. I believe that he made no more than $50,000 off that hoax. He also says that he is taking in 90,000 from the Hank saga. The haters are notifying the IRS because they think Rick is not paying sufficient income taxes on his earnings. It is not known if the IRS is taking any actions against Rick.
If Hank is a hoax, is Rick guilty of fraud? According to some folks over at Randy’s site who called the FBI, the FBI said that fraud is fraud, and it’s illegal to profit off of something you say is a Bigfoot if it is actually a prop. The FBI also hinted that they may (or may not) be watching Rick to see what he is going to do with Hank to decide whether there is sufficient evidence to go after him or not.
Craven Bigfoot footage. This is a video out of Saskatchewan and it very much looks like a Bigfoot in a lot of ways which I will not go into now. Most hoaxes do not have certain traits that this Bigfoot does. However this is an open plains type area and people said that the Bigfoot would hardly have anywhere to hide so people regard this as a possible hoax.
Nevertheless, you can see in this video that the Bigfoot disappears into some brush which completely masks the creature’s form. I regard this as very much a probable Bigfoot for a number of reasons. For one thing, look at how it moves so fast and how that movement reminds one of the Stacy Brown FLIR footage and the Prince Edward Island footage. That is one of the things that I saw that suggested this was a real Bigfoot to me.
Calgary Bigfoot Video. A family sees a Bigfoot in wintertime near Calgary, Alberta, Canada. This does look like a real Sasquatch to me for a variety of reasons. It is interesting that it appears to be freezing most of the time. Does not look like a suit to me.
