Deputy Sheriff Fired Over Fraudulent Bigfoot Corpse

Jonesboro, GA

A local sheriff's deputy and apparent con-man has lost his job over his part in a recent Bigfoot hoax. The 28 year old hoaxer, Matthew Whitton, was fired when the supposed Bigfoot corpse which Whitten and a friend, Rick Dryer, claimed they found in the north Georgia mountains turned out to be a rubber costume.

“I terminated him,” said Police Chief Jeffrey Turner. “He’s disgraced himself, he’s an embarrassment to the Clayton County Police Department, his credibility and integrity as an officer is gone, and I have no use for him,” Turner said. “His behavior is unbecoming of that of a police officer."

“This turn of events from hero to someone who defrauds a nation is just baffling. I don’t know how he got from one point to the other,” Turner said.

Whitton and Dryer had claimed that they found the corpse on a Bigfoot hunting expedition a few months ago. The two con-men had been running a website offering hunting trips to perspective victims for $499 per trip. They produced several videos on Youtube claiming they had found this corpse. In one of these videos the pair meet at Hartsfield International Airport to pick up Dr. Paul Van Buren, a scientist from Texas to examine DNA samples from the creature. The fake scientist was later exposed as Whitton's brother, Martin.

The exposure of the "scientist" fraud lead to the release of another Youtube video in which Whitton tried to salvage the hoax and taunted the people of the Bigfoot research community who had blown his cover (video below).

Within a short time Whitton and Dryer had teamed up with notorious Bigfoot scam artist Tom Biscardi and set up a press conference in Palo Alto, California during which they planned to release results of DNA testing from samples of the corpse. Of the three DNA samples that were tested one was determined to be unusable, one was determined to be human DNA and the other was said to be oppossum DNA.

Biscardi quickly attempted to attribute the oppossum DNA to being from the contents of the creatures stomach, yet the entire scam fell apart over this passed weekend when a block of ice in which the creature was encased melted and revealled that the supposed Bigfoot was in fact a rubber costume.

Both Whitton, who was on administrative leave from the Sheriff's department after shooting himself in the hand while on duty, and Dryer have since disappeared. Police Chief Turner says he has been unable to contact Whitton to give him his termination documents and retrieve police uniforms and other department property.