MICHAEL NEWTON: Patty-Whacked, Part 3: Heironimus Botched

Between 1996 and 2002, critics of the Patterson film—allegedly depicting a female Sasquatch, dubbed “Patty”—named three different candidates for the role of “the man in the ape suit.” Strange Magazine publisher Mark Chorvinsky fingered Hollywood makeup artist Tom Burman; Kal Korff and Clyde Reinke accused insurance agent Jerry Romney; while various newspapers worldwide picked Elna Wallace, widow of late Bigfoot-hoaxer Ray Wallace. In each case, the suspect denied participation in the filming.


Meanwhile, in autumn 1998, a fourth contender hired Washington attorney Barry Woodward to assert his claim as Patty, without revealing his identity. The nameless Yakima resident reportedly passed a polygraph exam, then dropped from sight once again. Five years would elapse before he resurfaced to muddle the issue further.
In February 1999, lawyer Woodward said that Mr. X contacted him “a few months ago after a network news program called, questioning the authenticity of the film.”1 That claim seems dubious today, since neither of the TV networks striving to debunk the Patterson film in 1998—BBC and Fox—identified Woodward’s client as Patty. Fox named Jerry Romney as the actor, while BBC offered no candidates. Instead, we now know that the self-proclaimed Patty impersonator was approached for the first time by freelance author Greg Long, in early December 1998. Only then did the man contact Woodward.2


Who is Greg Long? His Northwest Mysteries website—the bulk of it still “under construction” as of August 2010—calls him a “searcher for facts,” a one-time English teacher, Peace Corps volunteer, and would-be novelist whose maiden literary effort never made it into print. Although committed to debunking Sasquatch, he proclaimed, “The world is a much stranger place than we think. There’s something much bigger than Bigfoot out there. And it’s real.”3


As described in what Long calls his “monster of a book,” his mission to discredit the Patterson film began on a barstool in 1995 and spanned the best part of a decade, climaxed with eventual publication in 2004. As Long explains his crusade: “The public deserves to hear the full, factual story of the Patterson film. I believe very strongly in this, so I have let the exact words of those who know the story speak for themselves.... These people who knew the infamous Roger Patterson tell it like it was, as best they remember it....It is difficult to stand up in the midst of the herd and tell the truth as it is, because, in this case, it is an unpleasant, brutal truth. The public deserves it.”4 [Emphasis in the original.]


Kal Korff seconded that emotion in his foreword to Long’s book. Having endorsed an entirely different Patty-player in 1998, Korff now cast his vote for Long’s “historic milestone in the field of investigative journalism,” praising Long as “truly a rare gem who stands out from among the many authors and interested parties nowadays who write about the so-called paranormal and profess to be ‘investigators.’ With Greg, you won’t find any false claims, nor will you find supposition passed off or disguised as if it were fact.”5


With that in mind, Long’s readers must have been dismayed by his forays into amateur psychoanalysis and his repeated attempts to read the minds of individuals he never met. Regressing through space and time to Bluff Creek, California, on 20 October 1967, Long found Roger Patterson broadcasting “desperate fear” from his eyes, recalling dreams “he had fleshed out in the early hours of dawn,” sensing “the big idea in the shadows,” and so forth. “In his mind,” Long surmises, “[Bigfoot] was silently moving through the trees alongside the road just ahead,” and so on. This concerning the same mercenary hoaxer who knows that Sasquatch doesn’t exist, depicted in one fanciful scene, alone at his home, crowing to his mirror, “I’m goin’ to make a million bucks!”6


Companion Bob Gimlin, meanwhile, is “apprehensive and vigilant,” conscious that “Patterson was now submerged in thought, almost in a trance.” Long tells us that “Cold dread draped over Gimlin,” aggravated when “a fetid odor suddenly filled the air.”7 Its source remains unclear, since—once again—Long has assured us that Sasquatch doesn’t exist. Perhaps the costumed actor had issues with personal hygiene?


Such baseless speculation and pseudo-psychology abounds throughout Long’s text. Far from restricting it to distant sites in decades past, he also practiced on people whom he actually met. Interviewee Jerry Merritt “projects a sense of dread,” while Long intuits what another, Pat Mason, “must have thought ... for years and years.” Bob Gimlin, Long says, “apparently came under Patterson’s spell.” When Long’s “man in the suit,” Bob Heironimus, speaks, “a nervous twitch ripple[s] through his voice.”8 The list goes on and on.


Even then, Long’s mind-reading pales beside his apparent malice toward some of his subjects. Roger Patterson bears much of the author’s animus, habitually described as a “little man” who rides a “little,” “small,” or “puny” horse. Anonymous barroom witnesses brand Patterson a fraud and liar, thus launching Long’s quest to expose him. Patterson manipulates, dupes or entrances all who cross his path—at least, when not cringing in dread from the stench of a monster that doesn’t exist.9


Bob Gimlin fares little better with Long, emerging in print as a strange hybrid of gullibility and guile. “A hunched-over human form,” when not under Patterson’s “spell,” Gimlin becomes “mysterious,” “supposedly a horse breeder and cattleman,” who winds up “bitter” and “discarded” by his larcenous partner in crime.10
And Long reserves a special venom for Bigfoot researchers who dispute his theory. Canadian John Green—“tall, bony, and lugubrious”—“drones” interminably in a voice “edged with dreamy dullness,” except when he “fumes” in response to Long’s prodding. René Dahinden “raves” in an accent that Long can’t resist mocking—“I vas clueless”; “I vouldn’t do that!”—ad nauseam. His excuse, dished up in advance, is a pretense of objectivity: “I retain throughout the book the local dialect, inflection, and syntax of the witnesses wherever possible.”11


Or wherever it makes them sound foolish.


How does Long fare when dealing with objective facts? Should we begin with his description of Patty’s “pinkish soles,” in fact a shade of gray on every color print of the Patterson footage?12 Or is it best to move directly to his contradictory descriptions of the “ape suit”?


Bob Heironimus initially told Long that Patterson’s suit was a three-piece affair. The “head” was something “like an old-time football helmet” with a mask attached. Heironimus “sensed that the mask was made of leather, but he wasn’t sure.” Below the helmet was “a corset or middle piece between the neck and waist,” fashioned from the malodorous hide of “a dead, red horse” that Patterson had killed and flayed. Heironimus could not describe the sleeves, but recalled that the costume’s hands “felt like stiff leather gloves.” Patty’s artificial breasts were “solid,” not “bouncy.” As to their means of attachment, Heironimus “never gave it much thought.” The costume’s “legs” consisted of rubber hip boots with the feet cut off, replaced by “old house slippers you used to see around, that looked like a big foot with toes on them.” Over everything, Patterson had “attached or glued fur from an old fur coat.” Although Heironimus was never fitted for the suit, he managed to wear it over his street clothes.13


If that getup sounds little or nothing like Patty on film, we should not be dismayed. Heironimus also claimed that on the day of the filming, he met Patterson and Gimlin at Willow Creek, some 20 miles southwest of the actual Bluff Creek film site. That gaffe prompts Long to wonder if Heironimus is lying, but he finally decides to let it slide without resolving the discrepancy.14


The strange description of Patterson’s homemade ape suit becomes more significant in Long’s last chapter, when he scores a “breakthrough” with discovery of North Carolina costume-maker Phil Morris. In November 2003, with Long’s manuscript ostensibly finished, Morris claimed that he had sold a gorilla suit to Patterson in August 1967. The suit consisted of six pieces—the main body with four limbs, plus detachable head, hands, and feet—all made from knitted cloth with thousands of artificial hairs sewn on by a machine. In short, it bore no resemblance whatever to the suit described by Heironimus—and, as amply indicated by a photograph, it likewise looked nothing like Patty.15


What’s a truth-seeker to do with such glaring contradictions? Morris did his best to help Long, describing a follow-up phone call from Patterson, wherein Morris coached him on how to flesh out Patty’s shoulders (football pads) and extend the arms (by inserting sticks). Heironimus recalled no such features—and plainly described his hands sliding into leather gloves—but Long charged merrily ahead. Of course the Morris mask is wildly different from Patty’s face on film, but Morris helpfully suggests that “maybe Patterson brought in somebody to work on the face.” He fantasizes Patterson building a facial mold from plaster of Paris, creating a lifelike rubber mask to suit his needs, and so on. And Patty’s breasts? Long speculates that “Patterson could have attached black balloons filled with sand to the front of the suit.” All that’s missing is a single shred of evidence. Ignoring all discrepancies—and his primary informant’s published statements—Long concluded that “Heironimus had simply worn the suit and walked in it, and hadn’t examined it.”16


Luckily for all concerned, the suit is missing. Heironimus claims that Patterson and Gimlin ordered him to stash it in the trunk of his car, from which it later disappeared. In another flight of fantasy, Long tells us: “Later, at night, Patterson and Gimlin, unseen, removed the suit from the trunk.” According to whom? Perhaps Patterson’s ghost. Indeed, Long describes himself lying in bed and beaming telepathic questions to the late Bigfoot-hunter: “‘Roger,’ I thought, ‘Roger, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Bob’s breaking the silence.’”17
Before ending his narrative, Long finds time to praise foreword-author Kal Korff for “upset[ting] the Bigfoot community” in December 1998, with his performance on Fox’s World’s Greatest Hoaxes. Carefully excised is Jerry Romney, named in that broadcast as the “man in the ape suit.” If that glaring omission agitated Korff, flying in the face of his stated belief that “Facts, should NEVER be ignored,” he raised no protest.18

* * *

Early reviews of Long’s book, collected by his publisher and echoed verbatim by conspiracy theorist Jeff Rense, were predictably ecstatic. Robert Kiviat, producer of the 1998 Fox special that named Jerry Romney as Patterson’s “man in the ape suit,” scuttled his own production to praise Long’s “highly informative and revealing investigation.” Debunker Kenneth Wylie—armed with a Ph.D. in African studies, whose 1980 volume Bigfoot: A Personal Inquiry into a Phenomenon restricts its case histories to the author’s home state of Michigan—found Long’s tome both “a very good read” and “a serious book that reveals an ‘actual’ conspiracy of deliberate lies.” Anthropologist Dawn Prince-Hughes deemed The Making of Bigfoot “a rare book: one that celebrates the true mysteries of our lives while remaining faithful to the importance of rigorous examination and critical thinking.” Michaela Kocis—a Czech radio broadcaster, described in Skeptical Inquirer as “the first journalist to write a definitive exposé article series on Greg Long’s research, having been given exclusive access to the investigative team”—opined that Long’s book “should set an example for courses on critical thinking and investigative journalism around the world.”19


In fact, the only “team” in evidence—discounting Long’s wife, who served as his photographer and sounding board—consisted of Kocis herself, with Kal Korff. Four months after The Making of Bigfoot hit bookshelves, they joined forces to plug the book via an article in the July/August issue Skeptical Inquirer. That piece referred to Korff’s foray on Fox—“it caused a sensation”—and repeated Clyde Reinke’s discredited claim that Roger Patterson helped American National Enterprises (ANE) “cook up” the Bluff Creek film. And once again, Korff failed to mention Fox’s (and his own) endorsement of Jerry Romney as Patty. Instead, Korff says the Fox broadcast caused Heironimus to confess.20


Moving on, Korff and Kocis claim that Opal Heironimus—Bob’s mother—saw and remembered Patterson and Gimlin returning a horse to her barn, prior to removing their Bigfoot costume from the trunk of Bob’s car. Strangely, Long assured his readers that both events occurred “unnoticed” and “unseen.”21


The most startling—some might say hilarious—part of the SI article appears under a subheading called “The Eye

Has It.” There, Korff claims a personal discovery from enlarged frames of the Bluff Creek film. Patty’s right eye, he says, displays “a sudden burst of light...which cannot be explained by normal sunlight reflecting off an organic eye.” Korff’s conclusion: the gleam is a pointer to a glass eye worn by Bob Heironimus! Alas, in his description of the hairy “football helmet” with a mask dangling an inch or more in front of his face, Heironimus told Long, “I couldn’t see out real good because my eyes were set back from the eye holes.”22


Unfazed by such glaring—or gleaming?—contradictions, Korff and Kocis finished strong, declaring that “Since the publication of Long’s book, the media reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. The mainstream press is no longer taking the Patterson Bigfoot film seriously as evidence of anything but a hoax.”23 It’s tempting to ask when the “mainstream press” did accept the film as evidence of Bigfoot’s existence, but the odds of a serious answer are nil.

* * *

Friends of Roger Patterson and serious Bigfoot researchers soon replied to Long and Korff. Florence Merritt Showman, a relative of Long’s dread-filled witness Jerry Merritt, penned a letter to the Yakima Herald-Republic, flatly declaring that her family’s home “never at any time was a Bigfoot headquarters as Long wrote in his book,” and that “the Merritts had no involvement in the Patterson and Gimlin Bigfoot film.”24


Sasquatch researcher Daniel Perez, writing to Fortean Times, dissected Long’s work in detail, beginning with the flyleaf’s spurious claim that Patterson’s film “has managed to fool scores of scientists.” He noted Korff’s and Long’s clumsy evasion of the Jerry Romney gaffe from 1998, suggesting that Long and Robert Kiviat collaborate on a new TV special titled “Secrets Revealed: How We Substituted Romney For Heironimus And Duped The American Public!”25


Loren Coleman, reviewing Long’s book for Fate magazine, called it “a well-orchestrated character assassination of Roger Patterson....At 475 pages, it is badly in need of more editing and less about when Greg Long eats chocolate doughnuts (p. 354). Two-thirds of this book is mostly flowery prose that you will have to endure to locate the kernel of the story. That core turns out to be a ‘he said/he said’ tale viewed through Greg Long’s biased sunglasses.”26


From Russia, veteran Yeti researchers Dmitri Bayanov and Igor Bourtsev joined the chorus, declaring that “By failing to re-create the alleged Bigfoot costume and re-enact the film Kal Korff and Greg Long have exposed themselves as sham investigators and presumptuous men.”27


John Green also weighed in from Canada, ignoring Long’s personal insults while detailing errors from the book and the Korff-Kocis article in a letter to Skeptical Inquirer. Happily, for his targets, Green’s rebuttal exceeded the magazine’s maximum word-count for letters, and thus went unpublished. If it had run, SI readers would have learned that Patterson had no relationship with ANE prior to the Bluff Creek filming; that the dead-horse suit described by Bob Heironimus bore no resemblance to any made by Philip Morris; that Heironimus contradicted himself on details of his role in the filming, first claiming in print that Bob Gimlin approached him, later telling TV reporters that Patterson made the first overture; that Korff falsely dated the first Heironimus “confession” from 2003, ignoring his revelations to lawyer Barry Woodward five years earlier; and that the mainstream media’s reaction to Long’s book, far from being a landslide of acclaim, was “pretty much non-existent.”28


In parting, Green proposed that “For the sake of its own reputation The Skeptical Enquirer [sic] should ask its associated organization, the Council for Media Integrity, to take a truly skeptical look at the piece of puffery the Enquirer [sic] has recently published promoting Greg Long’s The Making of Bigfoot.”29 No such self-examination was forthcoming.

* * *

When Korff and Long replied to their critics, they seemed to speak with a single voice—or, at least, to adopt the same frantic style. Visitors to Korff’s website will note his fondness for random capitalization, generally viewed on the Web as intemperate shouting. In the heat of battle, Long mimicked his cheerleader’s style—and, in some cases, his very words.


Korff led off on 8 March 2004—one week after his joint appearance with Long, Kiviat and Kocis on Jeff Rense’s radio show—with a posting to the Rense website. First declaring that “radio history was made” during the first broadcast, he crowed, “For the first time EVER, you were TOLD THE TRUTH about how the infamous Roger Patterson hoax 1967 ‘Bigfoot’ film was made.” He aimed another pitch at potential buyers—“The book is brand new, in great demand, and can be purchased for less than $20.00. This is a small price to ‘pay’ for the truth.”—but somehow got confused. The cover price listed by Prometheus Books, then as now, was closer to $26.30 Having delivered the plug, Korff turned on his detractors in familiar ungrammatical style.

Notice this truth did NOT come from the “Bigfoot community”—which really does not exist in any tangible sense...There are several members of this self-proclaimed “community” that are now very upset. Their reactions are very emotional, and one important FACT must NOT be forgotten: NONE of them can PROVE that the man WE CLAIM wore the Bigfoot suit, IS WRONG or not telling the truth! They CANNOT prove that the man we are now offering to the public, is lying.... Tonight, our Bigfoot Investigation Team [sic], especially myself, expect to be attacked on the Jeff Rense Program. We will be attacked emotionally, and according to the rumors, We [sic] have to LAUGH at this notion. Do you think gravity CARES if people do not want to believe that it exists? Do you think the rain CARES of people think [sic] it is “horrible” that it is raining out? NO, they do not, and they SHOULD not. Our “critics” sometimes mean well, but are fundamentally MISGUIDED. They have FORGOTTEN ONE RULE OF SCIENCE AND EVIDENCE: that extraordinary claims, require extraordinary proof. WE HAVE SUPPLIED OUR BEST EVIDENCE, IT IS IN THE FORM OF GREG LONG’S BRUISING, AND DEFINITIVE EXPOSE OF THE ROGER PATTERSON “BIGFOOT” FILM HOAX. Our “critics” will do EVERYTHING BUT DISPROVE US, BECAUSE THEY CANNOT. So when they start attacking us, especially me, with emotional claims that I am a “debunker” or a “skeptic”—I will NOT let such reckless charges stand. They are FALSE and they are LIES, and those making such claims WILL be held ACCOUNTABLE and EXPOSED....As you listen to their “case”...ask yourselves these three questions: 1) Are they calling us debunkers or skeptics? IF so, they are LYING, there is nothing further to discuss. 2) HAVE THEY PROVEN that Bob Heironimus is NOT the man who wore the Bigfoot suit? The ANSWER IS NO! 3) Have they PROVEN Phillip Morris did NOT make the Bigfoot suit that he sold to Roger Patterson? The answer once AGAIN, is NO!! Until they DISPROVE AND ADDRESS THESE THREE ISSUES, THERE IS NOTHING FURTHER TO DISCUSS. THEY CAN COMPLAIN, BUT THAT IS ALL....OUR EXPOSE IS JUST BEGINNING. I CALL ON, AND CHALLENGE, MR. BOB GIMLIN TO CONFESS THE HOAX, TO FINALLY TELL THE TRUTH. MR.GIMLIN, FEEL FREE TO SUE US IN COURT FOR LIBEL AND SLANDER. JUST REMEMBER THAT THESE CHARGES GO BOTH WAYS....Mr. Gimlin, YOU, sir, so far, can’t seem to pass the “smell” or “credibility test”. WE WILL NOT REST UNTIL YOU ARE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE, AND YOU CONFESS THE TRUTH ABOUT YOUR INVOLVEMENT IN THE PATTERSON BIGFOOT HOAX, which you CONTINUE to deceive people on, and make money on, by selling to consumers, a story that is NOT true, and because it is NOT true, you are leading people to BUY what they BELIEVE is true, but it IS NOT. That is CONSUMER FRAUD, AND WE WILL NOW COOPERATE WITH AUTHORITIES TO PROVIDE EVIDENCE FOR PROSECUTION UNDER THE CONSUMER FRAUD STATUTES. If ANYONE in the Bigfoot “community” has a “problem” with trying to hold Mr. Gimlin ACCOUNTABLE for his role in the Patterson HOAX, then it is because the Bigfoot “community” has a PROBLEM WITH THE TRUTH.31

Having declared himself a force of nature, on a par with gravity and rain, Korff’s final salvo was bizarre. Long’s book, if it can be believed, made the case that no one earned a profit from the Bluff Creek film except, Long claims, for Patterson himself and his mythical partners at ANE.


Long himself backed Korff’s broadside with a message of his own on Rense.com, praising Korff even as he seemed to hold Kal at arm’s length. He led with a statement that “Kal Korff has written the introduction to The Making of Bigfoot, but nothing else in my book, except a few paragraphs that I edited that form his account of solving the ‘feet’ problem on the Bigfoot. That particular item about the Bigfoot’s fake feet are [sic] dealt with in my book. Kal has reviewed my facts, as has Kiviat, and that’s it. So, I’m totally independent of these two gentlemen as far as my findings go.”32 In fact, as author Long should know, he wrote the introduction to his own book. Korff supplied a short foreword, clearly identified as such.33


After that muddled start, Long turned to an obligatory defense of his ally, channeling Korff in the process. “Also,” he wrote, “this fiction that Korff is a ‘debunker’ is another falsehood. My Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines the word ‘debunk’ this way: ‘to expose the false or exaggerated claims of’ something. Well, that’s what I do in my book, I expose a false claim. And that’s what Kal is doing. But he’s NOT A DEBUNKER IN THE SENSE of A CLOSE-MINDED SKEPTIC. I know Kal’s working on many other projects where the truth must be told. One is terrorism; he’s working on a book called Secret Wars; and I’ve got a glimpse of it. Believe me, people are going to be wildly surprised by that book.”34 Advertised on Amazon.com as a November 2004 hardcover release, Secret Wars has yet to appear in print. As of today, its Amazon page urges customers to “Sign up to be notified when this item becomes available.”35


In closing, Long awkwardly paraphrased Korff: “Finally, I want to say that Bob Kiviatt [sic] and Kal Korff are COMMITTED AND DEDICATED TO FINDING THE TRUTH. I’ve never met in my life two of the hardest working individuals in the fields of television documentary and the print media than these two guys. NEVER. I know for a fact that their main goal is to GET TO THE BOTTOM OF CONTROVERSIAL AND DEBATED CASES AND TO PRESENT EVIDENCE THAT MIGHT POINT TO OR PROVE A REAL, UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENON EXISTS. Every word I’ve written in The Making of Bigfoot has been published on strict standards of EVIDENCE and WHAT WOULD STAND UP IN A COURT OF LAW. [N.B.: Presuming unsupported hearsay were admissible, which it is not.] My findings are BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT. I’ve been asked tough questions by Kal and Bob Kiviatt [sic]; believe me, they haven’t left me off the hook [sic]. Their role in the whole Patterson affair is to get the truth out to the world. It’s as simple as that. The public has the right to know. It’s time for flim-flam and unbased [sic], unsupported claims to END. I welcome people who can PROVE ME WRONG in The Making of Bigfoot. I know I’m NOT WRONG, but if people feel otherwise, they NEED TO DISPROVE ME.”35


In other venues, Korff pursued his empty threats to jail Bob Gimlin for a nonexistent crime. In an email to John Green, he wrote: “As for ME, I WANT to see Gimlin PROSECUTED and am WORKING TO ACHIEVE THIS. I just hope he does not run and ‘confess’ to Kiviat before my work with the Attorney General is complete. If Gimlin ‘comes clean’ to Kiviat before I finish, he probably WON’T be prosecuted. I hope he DOES get nailed, because consumer fraud IS CONSUMER FRAUD. I also expect to fly out (unless I can accomplish the same from over here) to give a deposition to the Attorney General’s office for CONSUMER FRAUD...specifically Gimlin's comments over Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science.”36 Most readers of this article will recognize Korff’s allusion to a documentary special broadcast by the Discovery Channel on 9 January 2003—from which Bob Gimlin earned precisely nothing.


Greg Long, meanwhile, reserved his harshest prose for Dmitri Bayanov, delivered in a May 2004 email. Long wrote:

Dmitri,Here’s what it comes down to: you, like every other ignorant Patterson film worshiper, embrace an UTTER LIE fabricated and executed by a CON MAN, an UNEMPLOYED BUM who purposely wouldn’t work for a living and who chose to CHEAT AND LIE AND STEAL to make his way through his short life. By the way, JOHN GREEN is TOTALLY MISINFORMED when he says Patterson was an HONEST MAN. Maybe JOHN GREEN should get off his ass and go talk to VILMA RADFORD, who Patterson RIPPED OFF. It is your job to DISPROVE EVERY STATEMENT OF EVERY PERSON IN MY BOOK, a book which I guarantee you have NOT READ. You know why you have not read it: you are a CLOSED-MINDED FOOL. I’ve watched BOB HEIRONIMUS walk and he walks like the Bigfoot in the Patterson HOAX FILM. Same arm swing, same cupped hands, same bowed shoulders, same gait. [N.B. The same argument used in 1998 to identify “man in the suit” Jerry Romney.] ...You are a VERY STUPID man to declare that he is a liar without even meeting him, without performing character checks, and without digging into his background. The same goes for everyone else being copied on this email....By the way, regarding this idiotic “IM” or BODY INDEX, what the hell does it even mean? ... Get off this STUPID IM crap. Regarding the BIGFOOT TRACKS, they were FAKED after the filming. Prove they weren’t!!! Regarding this VERITABLE PILE OF GARBAGE relating to SCARS ON THE WRIST, TUMORS, HERNIAS, SUPPURATING EYE: all crimps in the suit and optical artifacts detected by the FILM WORSHIPER AS THY STUDY DEEPER AND DEEPER THE “MYSTERIES” OF THE FILM IMAGES....PHILIP MORRIS manufactured the GORILLA SUIT that Patterson used. Go contact him, Dimitri [sic]. AGAIN, YOU NEVER READ THE BOOK. By the way, why didn’t JEFF MELDRUM get off his ASS when he entered the Bigfoot field and do the proper “on the ground” investigation of Roger Patterson and all the players over in Yakima like any good scientiss [sic] would. MELDRUM doesn’t believe that CON ARTISTS exist, or PATHOLOGICAL LIARS. He is too far GONE deep within his academic studies over in Idaho and too much of a BLIND BELIEVER IN THE HOAX FILM to get out of it now. If he’s the best SCIENTIST you can trot out to talk about the Patterson film, your group is in DEEP DOO-DOO. I notice that he is LYING LOW these days, VERY LOW. Why is that? I think he’s work on a COSTUME BOOK, or something dealing with MORMON HISTORY AND GENETICS, MAYBE TO PROVE BIGFOOT IS REALLY A DISPLACED AFRICAN APE THAT SOMEHOW GOT OVER HERE WITH ELEPHANTS AND TIGERS WHEN THE ANCIENT HEBREWS POPPED UP IN NORTH AMERICA IN JOSEPH SMITH’S FAKE HISTORY BOOK? I’ve got to go, Dimitri [sic]. Let me know when you actually READ MY BOOK. By the way, how do you know that the Patterson film isn’t REPRODUCIBLE? Haven’t you tried it?Greg Long (my father’s name: Boris Danielovitch Suslov)37


Long’s confusion over “this STUPID IM crap” is sadly typical, beginning with his garbling of the standard abbreviation. The body mass index (BMI) is a statistical measure of body mass based on a subjects weight and height. It was invented during the 19th century by Belgian polymath Adolphe Quetelet, and has been recognized worldwide since 1850—except, apparently, by Greg Long.


Whatever Long and his “Bigfoot Investigation Team” believe they have proved, amidst all of his book’s contradictions, supposition, and hearsay—buttressed by their personal attacks on those with the temerity to disagree—one thing is crystal-clear. Somewhere between the launching of their search in 1998 and their furious emails in 2004, they lost sight of Korff’s maxim that “When listening to FACTS and considering them, logic should reign supreme, not emotions nor personal biases and desires.” Clearly, based on their ad hominem attacks and empty threats of prosecution, they had lapsed into what Korff calls “the immoral game of ‘attack the messenger.’”38


And in the process, proved exactly nothing.


Six years on and counting, the Korff-Long investigation that was “just beginning” has produced no further revelations. No one has been “held accountable and exposed” for calling Korff and Long debunkers—which, by Long’s own public admission, they are. No prosecutor anywhere has charged Bob Gimlin with a crime. Despite Korff’s boast that Long’s tome “HAS ALREADY BECOME the BESTSELLING, AND THE FASTEST SELLING BOOK ON BIGFOOT OF ALL TIME,” it stands eclipsed by works from Jeff Meldrum, Loren Coleman, John Green, and the late Ivan Sanderson.39


The rest, we may hope, is silence.


1 Linda Ashton, “Man Claims to be Bigfoot in Famous 1967 Sasquatch Film,” The Oregonian (Portland, OR), 2 February 1999.
2 Greg Long, The Making of Bigfoot (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2004), pp. 145, 154, 209.
3 “About Greg Long,” Northwest Mysteries, http://northwestmysteries.com/aboutgreglong/default.htm.
4 “About Greg Long”; Long, pp. 14-15, 29.
5 Kal Korff, foreword to The Making of Bigfoot, pp. 9-11.
6 Long, pp. 19-21, 27.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid., pp. 115, 40, 146, 159.
9 Ibid., pp. 19-27, 30-1, 159, etc.
10 Ibid., pp. 152, 157, 159, 161, etc.
11 Ibid., pp. 178-80, 182-3, 190-3, etc.
12 Ibid., p. 22.
13 Ibid., pp. 344-6, 355.
14 Ibid., p. 348.
15 Ibid., pp. 446, 449, 460.
16 Ibid., pp. 355, 447-8, 453, 458.
17 Ibid., pp. 350-1, 358.
18 Ibid., pp. 451-2; Kal Korff, CriticalThinkers.org, http://www.kalkorff.com.
19 Long, flyleaf and back cover; Rense.com, http://www.rense.com/general49/making.htm; Kal Korff and Michaela Kocis, “Exposing Roger Patterson’s 1967 Bigfoot film hoax,” Skeptical Inquirer (July/August 2004), http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/korff04.htm.
20 Korff and Kocis.
21 Ibid.; Long, p. 351.
22 Korff and Kocis; Long, p. 346.
23 Korff and Kocis.
24 The Bigfoot Forums, http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=9999&mode=threaded&pid=199455.
25 “The Patterson Film: A Discussion by Daniel Perez,”Bigfoot Encounters, http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/forteantimes05.htm.
26 Loren Coleman, Fate (May 2004), pp. 82-3.
27 Dmitri Bayanov and Igor Burtsev, unpublished letter to the Skeptical Inquirer (30 July 2004), Bigfoot Encounters, http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/response_si.htm.
28 John Green, unpublished letter to Skeptical Inquirer (25 July 2004),Bigfoot Encounters, http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/response_si.htm.
29 Ibid.
30 Kal Korff, “Korff Statement About The Patterson Bigfoot Film Commentary,” Rense.com (8 March 2004), http://www.rense.com/general50/kr.htm; Prometheus Books brochure for The Making of Bigfoot, March 2004; Prometheus Books (28 July 2010), http://www.prometheusbooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=43_147&products_id=1037.
31 Kal Korff, “Korff Statement About The Patterson Bigfoot Film Commentary.”
32 “Statement From Author Greg Long On Patterson Film,” Rense.com (8 March 2004), http://www.rense.com/general50/statement.htm.
33 Long, The Making of Bigfoot, pp. 9-15.
34 Ibid.
35 Amazon.com, http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Wars-Kal-K-Korff/dp/1591021499/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280316287&sr=1-1.
35 “Statement From Author Greg Long On Patterson Film.”
36 Kal Korff email to John Green (3 March 2004), Bigfoot Encounters, http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/response_si.htm.
37 Greg Long email to Dmitri Bayanov and others, posted to the Forest Giants newsgroup on 23 May 2004.
38 Kal Korff, “About Us,” CriticalThinkers.org, http://www.kalkorff.com.
39 Korff, “Korff Statement About The Patterson Bigfoot Film Commentary”; “Bigfoot” title search, Amazon.com (28 July 2010), http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dus-stripbooks-tree&field-keywords=bigfoot&ih=6_0_0_0_1_0_0_0_0_1.109_163&fsc=-1&x=12&y=19.