The two Georgia men who found a Bigfoot carcass said it was a joke. Matt Whitton and Rick Dyer said the prank got out of hand.
By: Sara Smith
Published: Aug 21, 2008
Updated: Jul 2, 2009
The Bigfoot carcass that was found by two Georgia men raised a lot of excitement. However, we now find out that it was one cruel joke.
Matt Whitton was immediately fired from his job as a police officer in Georgia. The firing was over his role in the Bigfoot hoax.
Clayton County Police Chief Jeff Turner kicked Whitton off the police force.
"He lied on national TV," Turner says of Whitton, "so a defense attorney now could say, 'How do we know you're not lying now?'"
Rick Dyer, a car salesman, said the whole joke got out of hand due to the world coverage of the Bigfoot finding.
"It's just a big hoax, a big joke," Rick Dyer told WSB-TV in Atlanta, Georgia. "Bigfoot doesn't exist," Dyer added.
The two men made the announcement of their discovery last week in California. They claimed to have a Sasquatch corpse in a freezer. They insisted that DNA research would prove its existence.
Unfortunately, the DNA outcome was negative. The only finding was a match to a possum. Still, they continued to make their claims that a complete autopsy would be performed on the corpse.
Not everyone is laughing from this joke. Much of the news media felt it was a hoax from the start. Other people said it was a sick way for two men to gain 15 minutes of fame, if you call it that.
Whitton and Dyer said the hairy Bigfoot was nothing more than a costume stuffed with possum road kill.
Fired police officer Whitton said, "We're all about having fun."
Dyer and Whitton now face both civil and possible criminal prosecution. The two men received an undisclosed amount of money from Bigfoot detective, Steve Kulls, who thought the discovery was real.
After the two men collected the money, they staged the Bigfoot photographs.
The men have hired an attorney to represent them.
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