Hopes dashed, yet again

Shelby Martin has a column in the San Jose Mercury News about the denouement of the recent 'Bigfoot' find: "Bigfoot hunters Matt Whitton and Rick Dyer had tossed their find in a freezer and frozen it in a solid chunk of ice - to preserve it, they said. The two men finally turned over the freezer and Bigfoot enthusiasts waited with bated breath as the apparent 7-foot-7 inch 'body' slowly defrosted at an undisclosed location. After hours of waiting, a dark patch of hair emerged. Steve Kulls, executive director of Squatchdetective.com, extracted a hair sample and burned it. It was apparently made of synthetic fibers and "melted into a ball uncharacteristic of hair," Kulls said. An hour later, the group's fears were confirmed when further melting revealed a rubber foot... The two Georgia men who perpetrated the hoax were nowhere to be found. According to the Searching for Bigfoot's Web site, the organization plans to pursue legal action against the men. Whitton, a police officer in Georgia's Clayton County, and Dyer, a former Georgia corrections officer, claimed they stumbled upon the beast while hiking in northern Georgia in June... Clayton County Police Chief Jeff Turner said he has not spoken to Whitton but had processed paperwork to fire him. "Once he perpetrated a fraud, that goes into his credibility and integrity," Turner told the Associated Press. "He has violated the duty of a police officer."

Rico says he hopes it was worth getting fired over, but he doubts it...