Reactions to the Bigfoot Body press conference

I'm back and beginning to collect some samples of reactions from this afternoon's press conference.

NOTE: If you missed the presser, you can view it here.

My own reaction -- I'm underwhelmed. Inconclusive DNA evidence (with no provenance procedures taken in any case, so it would have been worthless regardless), a close up of the mouth of the "head" and a picture of something in the woods, too indistinct on camera for me to make out. EDIT: and now that they are right here, I still can't make them out.

Discovery.com has a piece up.

And here's FOXNews.com's take.

Wired.com includes the new pictures -- we're supposed to "eat crow" over these? AND as you'll no doubt notice, I've added the pics to the top of the post.


Here's the video of Whitton admitting that "Dr. Van Buren" was a hoax. He does NOT say that they don't have a body, though. Thanks to Anonymous, and Anonymous for the link to the pics and the video.

Searchingforbigfoot.com now asking for $2 to see the pics.

AND HERE IS THE PRESS CONFERENCE video thanks to KING5.com.

HAVE A LOOK AT THE NEW TEETH PIC I just uploaded above. Someone did some alterations and more details are visible. Notice something interesting? Looks like that's all the teeth the poor guy's got. (BTW, you can click to enlarge them.)

KEEP LOOKING AT THAT PIC and you'll notice all kinds of problems - there don't appear to be any lips or mouth around the sides. It looks like someone has glued the teeth into the mouth at an angle and the tongue under it, but no cheeks or lips evident on the sides. Just hair coming down. Where are the lips? A mouth has to be able to close, no?

HERE'S THE VIDEO where Matt Whitton says they took a 30.06 round out of the body:


You may have noticed in today's press conference that Whitton said it didn't have any obvious injuries other than the guts exposed. No mention of the 30.06 round and the felon hunter..

LATER LATER: It takes a year to load, but I'm finally getting Cryptomundo up. So here's a link to Loren Coleman's take on today's events. At the end of the post, Coleman poses a question: "Matt Whitton refers to the doctor impersonation stunt as “something to give the psychos something to do.” Is this all some kind of act of revenge?" I'd have to say that doesn't quite capture it for me. I've watched a couple of their videos today, and I've come away with the sense that these guys think bigfoot researchers are as dumb as dirt, easily fooled, and worthy of scorn. I wouldn't call what they were doing revenge as much as, from their point of view, mercilessly toying with the nerds. It's obvious they thought it was hilarious. And I think they were playing it for laughs up until August 1. (Paradoxically, that's the day they added the words "for entertainment perposes only" to the site -- and yes that's their mispelling of "purposes.")

What happened on August 1 to change everything? Consulting the timeline, that's the day they met Tom Biscardi. Until that time, they were in control and calling the shots in the most haphazard, wacky way they could think of. After that date, the videos disappeared, they stopped pulling pranks, and everything became more serious. As Whitton said during the news conference, "We really didn't know what we were doing at the time. Tom has really helped us out a lot."

I don't think revenge has anything to do with it. I'm sure they relished their chances to make a monkey out of people and burn books, but that was part of their merciless comedy. Then the fun stopped.

What went on in that meeting in the hotel down in Georgia?

LATER STILL: The NY Times has a short article about today's festivities. The title should clue you in on their take, "California: Bigfoot Remains a Myth." You know the editor had a chuckle over that fine pun there..

THE MERCURY NEWS out of San Jose has their take up. It has some good quotes from Whitton re: their attitude toward bigfoot researchers:

Further complicating the story were reports about the bogus YouTube video.

Whitton explained that the hoax video "was to give the psychos something to do over the weekend." The two have been stalked and even received death threats.

"Are there a lot of psychos in the Bigfoot community?" a reporter asked.

Yes, said Whitton. "It seems like there are lot of people in the Bigfoot world who are a little delusional."

AND HERE TOO is ajc.com's writeup.

WHERE DID I READ THIS: at one point, either Whitton or Dyer said that they chose Biscardi because "he's the first name that comes up when you type in the word 'bigfoot.'" I think it was the press conference, but now I can't remember and I didn't write it down, just made a mental note to check. I finally did just now, and Biscardi doesn't come up on the first page. The first organization is the BFRO.

ABOUT THAT DNA EVIDENCE: According to Scientific American's website, Biscardi incorrectly interpreted Dr. Nelson's results.

-- They brought an e-mail printout from Curtis Nelson, the University of Minnesota biologist testing three samples of the animal's DNA. According to Nelson, two were human, and the other was a combination and human and possum.

I don't know how you get a combination of human and possum unless you take intestines from a human who ate a possum.. but anyway, you'll have noticed that HUMAN DNA was in all three samples. And this is from Curt Nelson -- had there been anything in there that looked like it might be bigfoot related, he'd have said so.