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 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 well enough before trying to appear as an authority on it!
While this may just be a case of self-aggrandizement, such behavior could also be a sign of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Psychiatrists at Morningside Recovery can help a patient's recovery with behavioral therapy but there is no known cure.
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 address
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 “Worlds 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 first 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 fur 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 themself 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 soley 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 fit 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
n 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 glued into the suit. Once again Greg
Long seemed to be reaching out for anything he could come up with to try to 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
nevertells 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. I wish to offer 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 walked 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 does 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 over 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 Morris
Almost 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
Bigfootfilm 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 Patterson 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 about the feet.
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 extensive 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 through 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 there 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 the bulk that 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 the 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
Who is hoaxing who with the "Making of Bigfoot"?
Written by Bill Miller
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 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 well enough before trying to appear as an authority on it!
While this may just be a case of self-aggrandizement, such behavior could also be a sign of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Psychiatrists at Morningside Recovery can help a patient's recovery with behavioral therapy but there is no known cure.
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 address
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 “Worlds 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 first 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 fur 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 themself 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 soley 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 fit 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 glued into the suit. Once again Greg
Long seemed to be reaching out for anything he could come up with to try to 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
nevertells 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. I wish to offer 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 walked 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 does 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 over 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 Morris
Almost 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
Bigfootfilm 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 Patterson 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 about the feet.
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 extensive 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 through 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 there 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 the bulk that 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 the 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 nearly 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 Bob Heironimus is full of shit!”
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 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 is a type of tabloid
newspaper and the price Denise remembered them talking about getting was $50,000. DeHollander placed the time of Denise telling him about
Heironimus at nine years ago. Denise's story truly 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
concerning the tracks 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 its 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 spinea 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 about the line on the creatures back 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,
thus 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 not only wanted to believe that the Patterson/Gimlin film was a hoax, but he wanted to believe that
everything about the subject of Bigfoot 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. There is a distinct toe pattern on the Wallace
wooden carving that you will not find on any of the known Northern California Bigfoot cast in existence today. I say shame on the Wallace family and
shame on those who blindly accepted the notion that Ray Wallace was the cause of the Bigfoot tracks being found in the Northwest in the late 50’s and
through the 60’s without so much as even first 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.
Quelle:
Bill Miller
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