Originally posted on Mar 25, 2004
Response to “Bob H. is the Man in the Bigfoot Suit”
It Was NOT Me!
Recently, a new attempt has been made to debunk one of the most famous images of Bigfoot in the world. The Roger Patterson-Bob Gimlin film taken on October 20, 1967 in Bluff Creek California has been carefully analyzed for over 30 years, and this is just one of many attacks on its credibility by debunkers. Ironically, however, this latest attempt to call this film a hoax has earned little, five-foot-five ME, a footnote in Bigfoot history!!! Believe it or not, the man who has so-called “gone public” to say it was really him dressed up in a gorilla suit in this famous film, is named none other than “Bob Heironimus”! He spells it a little differently, but it’s obviously causing a good deal of confusion out there, so here’s my official statement on this case: That was NOT me!!! That’s right, the “Bob Heironimus” claiming to be the man in the Bigfoot suit, is NOT the same “Bob Hieronimus” who has interviewed countless Bigfoot researchers about this very film and other cases on his 21st Century Radio program! Ironic coincidence??? You decide. As unusual as my name is, I have been confused with at least three other Bob Hieronimi in this world, so this is not the first time I’ve been accused of doing something I had no knowledge of!
While it is too soon to make any conclusions about these latest hoax allegations, let me simply tell you now about the track record of two of the proponents of this story: Bob Kiviat and Kal Korff. Bob Kiviat you may recognize as the name behind the infamous “Alien Autopsy” footage of 1996. He has worked with Korff and FOX TV since then on several debunking films, including previous attacks on the Patterson-Gimlin footage that turned out to be baseless. First they pointed to an alleged zipper which they had erroneously confused with a crease down the center of the creature’s back. All gorillas have this feature which follows the direct alignment of their spinal cord into the crease of their buttocks. In 1998 there were claims to have identified the “man in the suit” as someone named Jerry Romney — claims which soon fizzled out. In 1999, USA Today claimed to have spotted an object hanging from Patterson’s Bigfoot, resembling a metal fastener. This later turned out to be “noise” in a printed photo from the film.
So the track record so far has been based more on hype than on fact.
And in typical debunking style, they are going after the biggest, best known case by trying to expose the Patterson film as a hoax. Remember this: even if their claims were to be proved true, this does not affect in the slightest any of the thousands of other cases of Bigfoot sightings by reliable witnesses worldwide, the forensic evidence collected from encounter sites and the lab tests done on them (including dermal ridges on footprints and DNA tests of hair samples that are shown to be from an unknown primate). In fact, on the Patterson film alone, a $75,000 study by the North American Science Institute was done, and their computer enhancement analysis suggested “that the creature’s skin and musculature are what one would expect to find in a living animal; not in a hairy suit, however innovatively it was constructed.”
Remember how the media jumped on the Doug and Dave bandwagon with two old hoaxers who claimed to make the crop circles? Did they stop to question how Doug and Dave were making crop circles all over the world? The amount of physical evidence and reliable witness testimony from around the world is enough for any thinking person to believe in the possibility of Bigfoot. Even famed primatologist, Dr. Jane Goodall, has stated that she thinks it is likely that the Sasquatch is real, considering that large groups of intelligent primates have eluded discovery in the past.
To learn more about why these and other attempts have been made to discredit Patterson’s film, we recommend Loren Coleman’s Bigfoot: The True Story of Apes in America, published by Paraview/Pocket Books. The London Times calls this book, “Objective, painstaking and exhaustive.” Loren Coleman’s website it https://www.LorenColeman.com.
