JONATHAN TURLEY

A television studio has the photos! An actual Bigfoot hoaxster sitting in a studio as big as life. Former police officer Matt Whitton and his equally dim-witted friend (and former correctional officer) Rick Dyer came out of hiding to fess up to fabricating the carcass of a Bigfoot. Whitten has now been fired from the police force, which takes a dim view of lying on national television. Conversely, Dyer is currently working as a car salesman where his conduct may be viewed as a positive resume item.

Whitton insists that it was all a joke and he just cannot understand how it got so out of hand. Let me see if I can work this one out. It probably started when you bought the rubber Bigfoot suit and filled it with possum roadkill and slaughterhouse leftovers. It probably got worse when you contacted the media and rode the wave of national media attention — including successive interviews defending your discovery as real. But it really got worse when you asked for money for the “real” carcass of a Bigfoot, adding criminal fraud to a bad joke, here. Whitton insists “All this was a big joke.” Perhaps, but this is a lesson of the costs of a really really bad joke. Clayton County Police Chief Jeff Turner doesn’t find the joke funny and notes that Whitton would not make a very credible police witness in a criminal case: “He lied on national TV, so a defense attorney now could say, ‘How do we know you’re not lying now?’ “

Dyer is equally confused over the controversy and threat of criminal and civil action: “It’s Bigfoot. Bigfoot doesn’t exist.”

If charged with fraud, the men appear to be building a defense that no one could have reasonably believed them and thus there was no criminal act.

Dyer insisted “Well, we told 10 different stories. Everyone knew we were lying.” I wonder if that is the same standard that he uses to sell cars.

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