Photographs of Frank Hansen’s model as it appeared in the exhibit Hansen framed for shopping malls are in Rick West’s book, Pickled Punks and Girlie Shows: A Life Spent on the Midways of America. No ice obscures the view.

The Minnesota Iceman looks like a chimpanzee with some broken joints to make it look slightly more human.

Ironically Heuvelmans thought a fake was real (Ice Man) and something real was a fake (Patty).

The story (or the various stories) and the convenient disappearance of the ‘thing’ are just way too fishy for me to think it was ever anything other than a con job.

Still, cool photos and a no doubt interesting book.

The creature is frozen in a pose one would expect to see if either (i) it was found dead in situ, lying on the ground in that position; or (ii) if it was hurriedly crammed into some sort of bag or container prior to freezing. (If this is, in fact, an unknown hominid, the allegation that it was killed in Vietnam and smuggled home in a body bag would match with the latter explanation.)

Skeptics have pointed to Frank Hansen’s various contradictory statements respecting the authenticity of this display as proof of it’s fakery. I don’t see it that way: If Mr. Hansen did come into possession of an unknown, humanlike hominid, I would imagine that he would have had the greatest concern that any testing would reveal that it was a human (or close enough to human) to warrant criminal charges.

A fascinating case — and in my opinion, a tragically wasted opportunity.