Rick Dyer Continues to Search for Redemption with "Taxidermied" Bigfoot

Illustration by Paul Blow

“The only reason I kilt [Hank] is I had to have my redemption...” --Rick Dyer; Bigfoot Hoaxer

Hank is the name for Rick Dyer's "taxerdermied" bigfoot. And yes, taxidermied deserves to be in quotes.  You can read a whole history of Rick Dyer from Bigfoot Lunch Club; starting with the 2008 bigfoot press conference. Including Rick Dyer's arrest for eBay fraud and his admission that Hank is little more than Camel Hair and Latex.

This hasn't stopped Rick Dyer from touring the Walmart parking lots of America and sharing the story of how he shot Hank near San Antonio, Texas. Recently in an an in-depth article from Texas Monthly (9600 words!), journalist Jeff Winkler spends time with Rick Dyer in a Walmart parking lot asking about the medical 3D scans of the taxidermied bigfoot body, reviewing his checkered past, and the self comparisons of PT Barnum and Andy Kaufman. Read excerpts from these three highlights below.

ABOUT THE 3D MEDICAL SCAN

"Rick’s confidante and second-in-command, Andrew Clancy, explained that the embalming process and the use of a resin had given the exposed skin a chalky, plaster-of-Paris appearance. He told us the feet and hands had been covered because the big reveal of Hank’s extremities was being saved for a later date (though no hints were given as to what abnormalities might be hiding under the black sheet). Both Rick and Andrew enumerated, with exacting detail, what we were seeing on the 3-D medical scan being passed around, a diagnostic image, we were told, that would be impossible to fake. True, it had been Photoshopped, but only to hide the serial number at the bottom, the one that would identify the hospital where it was taken (there were only three such scanners in the world, they said)."

ABOUT RICK DYERS CHECKERED PAST

"[Bigfoot Tracker News], however, doesn’t just disagree with Rick. It has published all of Rick’s previous, non-Bigfoot-related brushes with the law. In 2012 Rick was arrested for aggravated battery of a pregnant person (his wife), with more than one anti-Rick blog indicating or flat-out saying that he beat the hell out of her. In 2011 Rick was charged with eBay fraud, involving the false sale of vehicles, in San Antonio. That same year, in Arkansas, Rick had been contracted to run a used-car lot after claiming he had worked at one in Las Vegas. The Arkansas business filed charges against him because, as someone associated with the company cautiously described, “the tickets didn’t add up . . . to the extent that we felt obligated to press charges.” Around the same time, Rick allegedly worked for a tow-truck company—called, appropriately, Bigfoot Towing—and a woman accused him of illegally impounding her car."

COMPARING HIMSELF TO PT BARNUM and ANDY KAUFMAN

How would you differentiate between a fraud, a hoaxster, and a prankster? What was P.T. Barnum or Andy Kaufman, the two men to whom Rick enjoys comparing himself?

Even Rick, usually so loquacious, struggled for the right words when I asked him about this in Paris. “I believe they were showmen,” said Rick after declaring the two men hoaxsters but definitely not frauds. “They knew how to work people, and I believe I know how to work people. The people who think that I’m a hoaxster, people who think I’m just a showman with nothing to show for it, they’re all going to have to eat their words.”

Click to read the whole article titled, "Rick Dyer’s Believe It Or Not!"