Black Friday: eBay Body Bids & Hoaxer Wants Cop Job Back
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 10th, 2008
Black Fridays sometimes are not good days. Black Friday, October 24, 1929, is the one people often bookmark, but there have been others before…and after.
Black Friday (above), September 24, 1869.
This week has been horrible. And today, specifically, may go down in history as the worst day, since the Great Crash of 1929, for global stock markets. I’ve already written about the weird links between hoaxes and economic depressions, as well as other matters related to these times. What’s in store today? And beyond? Let’s look for this morning….
The news just got very bizarre. Matt Whitton wants his law enforcement position reinstated, the hoax costume is up for bid on eBay for thousands of dollars, and stock markets around the globe are tanking: Has the world gone mad?
Clayton News Daily newsman Daniel Silliman is on the beat again, reporting on the latest about the Georgia Bigfoot hoax melodrama.
Here is Silliman’s examination for Black Friday, October 10, 2008:
‘Bigfoot’ cop wants job back
The Clayton County police officer, who perpetuated a Bigfoot hoax, is fighting his firing.
Matthew Whitton has filed an appeal of his termination, asking to be reinstated to his job as a uniformed patrolman. Whitton, 28, was fired in August, after he attracted international media attention with claims he had the body of a dead Bigfoot.
Whitton and Rick Dyer, who once was a corrections officer, claimed they had the corpse of a legendary North American man-ape and had it frozen in a secret, safe location. They described the alleged animal in detail, including the color of its hair, its sexual organ and how “man-like” the animal would look, if it were shaved.
Teaming up with Tom Biscardi, a California man with a history of Bigfoot hoaxes, Whitton and Dyer held a press conference to “reveal the evidence.” The “evidence” amounted to blurry and unconvincing pictures, and an e-mail reporting DNA test results as “human,” “opossum” and “unidentified.”
A few days later, everyone involved admitted the claims that captured media attention from CNN to The Sydney Morning Herald, from the Clayton News Daily to the New York Times, were false. The find was apparently a rubber suit stuffed with animal entrails.
When news of the claims first broke, Clayton County Police Chief Jeff Turner said Whitton’s activities were personal as long as he did it on his own time, didn’t do anything illegal, and didn’t involve the police department. After the hoax was admitted, Turner said Whitton had lied on national television and lost his credibility.
Court cases in which Whitton was going to be a key witness, including an armed robbery that left a woman shot in the head and comatose, will probably be affected, legal observers say. Some charges could be dropped and some cases could be dismissed, observers speculate, because of the possible issue of Whitton’s credibility.
Friends of Whitton in the department, have privately called the incident a personal and professional embarrassment, even though the fired officer said the whole thing was just a joke. To date, he seems to still think it was a joke.
Dyer responded to Whitton’s firing in a conversation with the Clayton News Daily by attacking Turner’s personal integrity, and called Whitton a hero, because the officer was shot in the line of duty a few weeks before claiming to have found a Bigfoot body.
Whitton said he always kept his job separate from his hoax hobby, at one point using a different first name and telling reporters at the big press conference that “my job has nothing to do with this.” Most media outlets mentioned Whitton’s work, however, as a reason his claims could be credible.
The appeal, filed by attorney Robert F. Webb, adds another argument against Whitton’s firing, saying Whitton was “suffering from the physical and mental stress” from the shooting.
Webb is expected to also argue that the firing was done improperly.
A civil service board hearing has not yet been scheduled, according to the county’s personnel department.
It will be recalled that Whitton, before he said this was all a “joke,” before the “body” was even mentioned, had claimed that he was interested in Bigfoot from the time he was a boy and that hunting Bigfoot had always been his dream.
Likewise, those looking for evidence that Bigfoot was on Dyer’s mind long before this recent episode merely need to view the name of his towing company on the side of his truck.
I’ll have more to say later about what also seems like the incredibly unexplainable auction going on over at eBay to sell the actual costume that was in the ice chest. As of 7:00 am today, Black Friday, the bidding is up to $35,000 for the $499 costume and stuff. Unbelievable.
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“$35,000 for the $499 costume and stuff” ?.
P.T. Barnum was right. There’s a sucker born every minute.
He wants his job back!?!?!?…….Whitton, Dyer, and Biscardi should all be locked up.
kittenz, I agree. But let’s see if anyone bites on that price.
This story just won’t die!
It’s really upsetting that they could get that kind of cash from selling the costume. That almost encourages this type of blatant hoaxing.
Billy Bob: Hey Bobby Jo, want to make some money?? All we have to do is pull of a huge Bigfoot hoax, say we have a Bigfoot corpse, get plenty of media attention, get caught in our lies, set back the field of cryptozoology a decade or so, then sell the items we used to perpetrate the hoax on Ebay for tens of thousands of bucks.
Bobby Jo: Heck yeah man, whole heckuva lot better than workin for a livin Billy Bob!!
Yeah, we as a society should really encourage these fools and their foolishness. They already walked away with 50K, now they stand to make about that much more. And by “they” I mean all involved, not just Whitton and Dyer.
“What goes around, comes around.” And apparently, if you are a moronic jokester, things tend to come around more often.
Just desserts is what I call it!
I guess his little money making venture(hoax) did not turn out the way he imagined it. Good!
There is justice in the world. I have a crystal ball too! I saw a hoax and called it such, early in the game. I saw a police officer losing his job. I don’t see in my crystal ball, this whacko getting his job back. I don’t see that costume selling for $35,000. What I do see is justice prevailing. I see a former police officer standing in the unemployment line. I see this same officer with a BF costume packed away in his basement. I see Tom Biscardi on his ninth life. I see many things in my crystal ball but not of them are good, as they relate to this hoaxer’s life.
Ah, there is justice in the world!
I just noticed, with 19 bids, the price is up to $48,100.00. And the reserve still hasn’t been met! Crazy!
When I think about the woman who was shot and is now comotose and the pain her family is undergoing; for this irresponsible creep to possibly jeopardize the trial of her assailant just makes me want to stuff this sorry guy in a costume and stick it in a freezer and dump it in a lake.
Then to have the audacity to ask for his job back! I wouldn’t trust him to have good enough judgement to pick up the garbage!
When I checked this morning, the eBay listing for the hoax costume was up to $48,100.00.
But - and this is important - nothing is going in the seller’s pockets just yet because the “Reserve not met” indicator below the current bid means that the asking price has not been met.
So, if the reserve price is never met, the item will not sell.
Makes me really wonder how much the seller set the reserve at . . .
And let me just add in here that I really think that selling this hoax item sets a very bad example for the rest of the world. If successful, I see bad things in the future for cryptozoology.