Video: how the hoax was discovered

An American police officer who claimed to have found Bigfoot has been fired from the force after it emerged that the hairy heap in his freezer was not the half-man, half-ape of myth, but a full-length rubber gorilla costume.

In an elaborate hoax Matthew Whitton, a police officer in Clayton County, Georgia, and his partner, Rick Dyer, announced in a radio interview and YouTube video that they had found the creature's corpse in the remote forests of Georgia state.

They sold the rights to the corpse to Rick Biscardi, a Californian Bigfoot hunter, for a reported $50,000, and Mr Biscardi then presented the pair to the world at a press conference in Palo Alto last Friday, although he was forced to defend the lack of physical evidence on show.

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However, after Mr Biscardi asked Steve Kulls, a self-styled "Sasquatch detective", to examine the men's find, doubts about the find's authenticity began to emerge.

On Sunday, having had his suspicions already aroused by the creature's unnatural hair, Mr Kulls started melting down the large block of ice enclosing the specimen, according to a detailed statement posted on Mr Biscardi's website.

"Within one hour we were able to see the partially exposed head," Mr Kulls wrote.

"As I was now able to touch it, I was able to feel that it seemed mostly firm, but unusually hollow in one small section. This was yet another ominous sign.

"Within the next hour of thaw, a break appeared up near the feet area. As the team and I began examining this area near the feet, I observed the foot which looked unnatural, reached in and confirmed it was a rubber foot."

After admitting their deception in a telephone conversation with Mr Biscardi and promising to pay his money back, the two hoaxers swiftly checked out of their California hotel before the Bigfoot hunter could get there, making themselves as scarce as their mythical prey.

The hoaxers' own BigfootTracker website does not explain the motives behind it - except to offer visitors $499 Bigfoot hunting expeditions. Callers to a voicemail "tipline" advertised on the site are advised that the pair are also now searching for leprechauns, dinosaurs, the Loch Ness Monster and, of course, Elvis.

The joke fell flat with Jeffrey Turner, who as Chief of Police in Clayton County, Georgia, put Mr Whitton on medical leave when he was shot in the wrist as he tried to foil a robbery earlier this summer.

"As soon as we saw it was a hoax, I filed the paperwork to terminate his employment," said Chief 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,” he declared.

“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... For someone to do a complete three-sixty like that, I can't explain it."

The police chief said that he wanted to send Mr Whitton his termination paperwork and get back his uniforms - but had not yet managed to track him down.

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