Water Cooler

PALO ALTO (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ― Bigfoot or big fat lie? That was the question that still lingered for many people on Saturday.

Whenever someone reports sighting the hairy beast of yore (details always fuzzy) or capturing the hirsute humanoid on film (images always grainy), it scares up a dubious debate of international proportions. Friday in Palo Alto was just the latest episode in the Sasquatch show, as unreal as it may be.

Two men who claim to have stumbled across a Bigfoot corpse in the woods of north Georgia indignantly stood by their story at a hotel press conference during which they offered an e-mail from a scientist as evidence and acknowledged they wouldn't mind making a few bucks from the "find" they have kept stuffed in a freezer for over a month.
 
While the creature that they claim "may very well be Bigfoot" is lying dead in a freezer, other members of its species are said to be roaming the woods in the undisclosed area of northern Georgia.

"Everyone who has talked down to us is going to eat their words," predicted Matt Whitton, an officer on medical leave from the Clayton County, Georgia, Police Department.

Whitton and Rick Dyer, a former corrections officer, announced the discovery in early July on YouTube videos and their Web site. Although they did not consider themselves devoted Bigfoot trackers before then, they since have started offering weekend search expeditions in Georgia for $499. The specimen they bagged, the men said, was one of several apelike creatures they spotted cavorting in the woods.

As they faced throngs of cameras, reporters, believers, skeptics and a man in a head-to-toe ape suit, the pair were joined Friday by career Bigfoot tracker Tom Biscardi, head of a Menlo Park-based group called Searching for Bigfoot. Other Bigfoot hunters called Biscardi a huckster looking for media attention.

Biscardi fielded most of the questions. Among them: Why should anyone accept the men's tale when they weren't willing to display their frozen artifact or pinpoint where they allegedly found it? How come bushwhackers aren't constantly tripping over primate remains if there are as many as 7,000 Bigfoots roaming the United States, as Biscardi claimed?

"I understand where you are coming from, but how many real Bigfoot researchers are out there trekking 140,000 miles a year?" Biscardi said.

He, Whitton and Dyer presented what they called evidence supporting their Bigfoot theory. It was an e-mail from a University of Minnesota entomologist, but all it said was that of the three DNA samples sent to the scientist, one was human, one was likely a possum and the third could not be tested because of technical problems.

At least one other Bigfoot researcher, Idaho State University anthropologist Jeffrey Meldrum, called the trio's claims "not compelling in the least." He told the Scientific American that their photograph allegedly showing the remains of bigfoot in a freezer, "just looks like a costume with some fake guts thrown on top for effect."

Whitton and Dyer initialy offered three different accounts of how they found the corpse.

In early videos, the animal was shot by a former felon, and the men followed it into the woods. In a second version, they found a "family of Bigfoot" in North Georgia mountains. In the third, the two were hiking and stumbled upon the corpse with open wounds.

In one of their YouTube videos, they are shown speaking with a man they identify as a scientist. Earlier this week, they admitted that the man was Dyer's brother. Dyer said they were simply having fun.
 
On Friday, the men spoke at length about the June day they claim they hiked into the woods and stumbled upon the creature.

Whitton and Dyer said they found Bigfoot dead near a stream after they had hiked into the secluded woods for a camping trip.

"It was a pretty fresh body," said Whitton, who added that he and those who have seen the body, about eight or 10 people, have not officially determined how the creature died.

Whitton said he waited by the body for about nine hours while Dyer hiked out of the woods and retrieved his tow truck and the two then moved the body out of the area and into a freezer, where the supposed bipedal, apelike creature has remained for about 60 days.

Whitton, who claims he and Dyer spotted three other Bigfoot creatures walking about 50 feet from them, also stressed his concern for the species and their habitat.

Asked why anyone should believe his claims when he already had shown a flair for tomfoolery, he suggested that skeptics simply are jealous.

"They don't have a choice to believe us. We have a body," Dyer said.

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)