Minnesota Iceman Hoax

[Guest RayG]

From Jordi Magraner's paper:

"The corpse...Heuvelmans was able to examine it... [without ever actually being able to touch it or obtain samples]

...and to collect data from people who had seen it unfrozen... [Who? What 'data'?]

...The orbits were empty and bloody... [how did he determine it was blood without a sample?]

...revealing a part of the brain... [how did he determine it was brain matter without a sample?]

...anthropologist... examined the photographs and... [made pronouncements based on photos and not on examination and samples of actual body]

...a team was appointed to perform an autopsy... the showman... refused all access, once and for all... the traveling showman obstinately continued to refuse to give scientists access to the body, and the affair quickly died out... [why am I not surprised a showman wouldn't grant full access to the 'corpse'?]

...The scientists who were able to see it, or who examined the photographs thoroughly, have never had any doubt about its value and strangeness...the above mentioned scientists had no doubt about the study and the genuineness of the corpse. [without ever verifying its authenticity]

RayG

[Guest]

This is a poll only topic with replies disabled since there is an existing thread devoted to the discussion of the subject.

[Guest BitterMonk]

Perhaps you misunderstood West. The mannequin was so obviously a mannequin, that he couldn't believe anyone would have been fooled by it.

I didn't misunderstand. I can't believe anyone was or is fooled by it either, but that hasn't stopped it from happening.

[Guest ajciani]

And what evidence do you have that it (someone falling for the mannequin) happened?

As has been stated in several locations, and as the comparison of the old Heuvelmans and Coleman photos vs the unfrozen mannequin have demonstrated, there were definitely multiple versions of the iceman being displayed.

Heuvelmans knew it, Coleman knew it, and several others knew it.

One version, if it was a mannequin, was so good, that it could withstand hours of scrutiny, and so good that even after red flags concerning the defrosting and sampling of the "corpse" were raised, that the researchers continued to favor the idea of it being a corpse. Meanwhile, the other version (perhaps the one in West's picture) was so obviously a mannequin, that people could tell in a matter of moments.

[wolftrax]

It is the same thing.

Even has the same long weird thumb that S&H noted. Coleman didn't know what was up, the timing meant what he saw was a fake, but it looked exactly like what was claimed as real. He now acknowledges it was a hoax the entire time. There were no multiple versions, it's the same thing. A fake.

Edited May 18, 2011 by wolftrax

[Guest]

And what evidence do you have that it (someone falling for the mannequin) happened?

As has been stated in several locations, and as the comparison of the old Heuvelmans and Coleman photos vs the unfrozen mannequin have demonstrated, there were definitely multiple versions of the iceman being displayed.

Heuvelmans knew it, Coleman knew it, and several others knew it.

One version, if it was a mannequin, was so good, that it could withstand hours of scrutiny, and so good that even after red flags concerning the defrosting and sampling of the "corpse" were raised, that the researchers continued to favor the idea of it being a corpse. Meanwhile, the other version (perhaps the one in West's picture) was so obviously a mannequin, that people could tell in a matter of moments.

ajciani,

May I offer an opinion. You and others have stated that the West picture is obviously of a model. This is curious to me because it looks realistic and its torso looks like the body of the Iceman I saw at the Texas State Fair, prior to Sanderson and Heuvelmans' article publications. I remember thinking it (the body) looked like that of chimps I had seen at the zoo. I didn't think it was real, after all it was a Midway side show after all. And remember, the model was embedded in obscuring ice. The fact that it was championed by two Forteans with science degrees does not really bolster the case for its authenticity (in my view anyway).

The back story and the fact that it was a sideshow suggests very seriously that the Iceman was a gaff. What sense does the back story make on its face? Let's hide the fact that a (relic) human was killed (murdered?) by taking its body all over the countryside for public display? What?

Or a famous actor, a biblical creationist, buys this Darwinian throwback and doesn't want to release it to science because he fears it will prove evolution true? So, what does he do? Why of course-- he puts it on public display all over the country so average Joe and Jill audiences will be exposed to this definitive proof of evolution. Huh?

Hey, I killed a Bigfoot out in the woods. I was afraid it was more human than animal. Tried to bury the body, but the ground was too hard so I ..... put it in my freezer at home! I was going to wait til spring so I could bury it. Instead, I decided to carry it all over tarnation in a trailer and show it to paying customers! Logical thing to do, don't you think!

I would think that LAL's discovery would finally put the Iceman to rest. RIP.

[Guest]

Joshua Blu Buhs addresses the Iceman in his book -- BIGFOOT: The Life and Times of a Legend.

Buhs had access to Sanderson's private files as a researcher. Here are some tidbits from those files as well as from news articles, Smithsonian private archives, books, and articles relating to the issue (page 147-153):

Hansen originally told Sanderson that Russian sealers or Japanese whalers fished the Iceman cadaver from the sea.

He said he really didn't know what the creature was and didn't want to know.

He said the Iceman had been examined by scientists in Oklahoma and they took hair, tissue, and blood samples.

He claimed that he had never heard of Ivan Sanderson before.

Later Hansen changed his stories: for instance, he said the Iceman had not been fished from the sea but had been bought from a British exporter in Hong Kong. He also admitted that he had previously read all of Sanderson's articles on Abominable Snowmen.

He told Sanderson that the cadaver's owner was mad about the publicity it was receiving and had the creature replaced with something else.

According to Buhs: "At the end of April 1969, Hansen reappeared and went on tour again, this time with what he acknowledged was a fabricated wild-man, implying that it was a model of the original. The new display looked different than the old, with more teeth showing, the big toe moved, and other minor alterations." (p.151).

Buhs writes: "Napier excused Sanderson and Heuvelmans's lapse in judgement as an understandable reaction: in surreal, almost Gothic conditions, they had seen what for so long they had sought and convinced themselves that the (very good) model was a real beast." (p.151).

J. Lawrence Angel, the Smithsonian's physical anthropology curator said his institution would no longer collect sasquatch reports because of the Iceman fiasco -- he didn't want the Smithsonian to suffer in reputation because of too much tomfoolery associated with sasquatch.

Sanderson wrote to Napier and floated this theory: Hansen and the man who originally contacted Sanderson about the Iceman, animal importer Terry Cullen, had probably killed a real wild-man and had contacted him to generate publicity for the exhibit. When they received more publicity than they bargained for, including a possible FBI involvement, they feared jail time and sought to make the Iceman look like a con game to throw off authorities.

Buhs suggests Sanderson had a financial stake in keeping the Iceman story going. He notes that Sanderson told his publisher that the Iceman story, with its increasing "cloak-and-daggerish things" had "potential value vis-a-vis" the reprint of his "snowman book and potentially much more so for a sequel." (p. 153).

This is the most surprising revelation from Buhs, IMO: "Later, Sanderson arranged for Hansen to publish a story on Bozo for the men's magazine Saga --- anything to keep the story going." This is the tale of Hansen killing the wild-man himself while hunting deer, then froze it, and took it on tour. He had a fake model made after its publicity because he was afraid the Air Force would deny his pension if it was found out he had killed a wild-man. (This implies to me that Hansen had either told Sanderson much earlier about the "truth" of the Iceman's demise, or, more likely, Sanderson had thought up this angle, defended it to Napier to save face, and then convinced Hansen to "go public" with it in the pages of Saga).

Edited May 19, 2011 by jerrywayne

[Guest Crowlogic]

I'll add one more time. I saw the iceman on show at a Long Island shopping mall in 1972. The thing in the coffin/case was clearly not the same thing that was photographed in Argosy.

[Guest LAL]

I would think that LAL's discovery would finally put the Iceman to rest. RIP.

It did for me. Four people with credentials saw the real cadaver (most likely an unidentified Asian hominoid primate) and Rick West photographed the model Frank Hansen had made by various artists in Hollywood in imitation of the original. It was close but no cigar.

Dr. Heuvelmans wrote a 500 word technical article in French which I may be happy to quote - someday. Concerning the Saga story, amid major memory lapses, Hansen told Rick West he wanted to keep it in the news. A few months later Hansen was hospitalized for dementia and died in 2003.

I have my own conjecture about Hansen's memory but I need more information.

[Guest LAL]

I'll add one more time. I saw the iceman on show at a Long Island shopping mall in 1972. The thing in the coffin/case was clearly not the same thing that was photographed in Argosy.

Thank you. Did it look like the model Rick West photographed?

[Guest]

It did for me. Four people with credentials saw the real cadaver (most likely an unidentified Asian hominoid primate) and Rick West photographed the model Frank Hansen had made by various artists in Hollywood in imitation of the original. It was close but no cigar.

Dr. Heuvelmans wrote a 500 word technical article in French which I may be happy to quote - someday. Concerning the Saga story, amid major memory lapses, Hansen told Rick West he wanted to keep it in the news. A few months later Hansen was hospitalized for dementia and died in 2003.

I have my own conjecture about Hansen's memory but I need more information.

I had asked previously if those who still hold to the Iceman being the real deal were doing so because of the involvement of Sanderson and Heuvelmans. You replied that you maintained interest because of the affinity of the Iceman to aboriginal reports and the identification by locals of a match with Iceman pictures. I thought this was a tenuous line of support for the Iceman sideshow as a real cadaver.

Now you seem to place your trust in Sanderson and Heuvelmans after all, along with Indo-Chinese and Middle Eastern investigations.

My problem with such an approach: Sanderson and Heuvelmans were not thoroughly objective. They had an agenda. They were enchanted by reports of "unknown" animals and it colored their research. They did not view the body in unproblematic conditions. In fact, the body was purposefully obscured through the medium of ice. The two scientists virtually ignored the all-important fact that this was a carny sideshow for a reason. We do not know how familiar either man was with gaff making. In fact, Sanderson seems to think if it was a fake, then it would have been a patchwork of real animal body parts, such as the old "mermaid" gaffs that were the product of fish and monkey parts sewn together.

Also, the back story is, frankly, ridiculous on every level. If Hansen and company could make their money with a gaff or gaffs, why would they risk their enterprise, as well as their freedom, by showing a cadaver that could cause serious problems for them (as Hansen pretended it would be). If it was a real cadaver, of a wild-man or Darwinian transitional form, attained legitimately, why not have it verified by scientific authorities. It would be your property: you would be compensated one way or the other. If you were permitted to further display it---- think of the financial rewards!

Other problematical aspects of taking this gaff literally have been enunciated well in other posts above.

I'm beginning to realize the depth of harm done decades ago to sasquatch and wild-man research by an early band of credulous investigators, Sanderson, Heuvelmans, Green, and others, and find their missteps in gullibility and bias haunt us even now.

Edited May 19, 2011 by jerrywayne

[Guest LAL]

Hansen and company? Who was the company?

ETA, would you say Forth has an agenda too?

Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia: An Anthropological Perspective (Hardcover)

by Gregory L. Forth

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0710313543/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

Edited May 19, 2011 by LAL

[Guest]

Thank you. Did it look like the model Rick West photographed?

The exhibit I saw in the sixties prior to the Sanderson article looked like the West gaff photo (in the only part I could see clearly enough---its torso of sparse, yet thick hair, which allowed me to see its pale skin.)

Hansen and company? Who was the company?

If you believe Hansen, he and the anonymous owner. If you believe Sanderson, Hansen and Terry Cullen, the animal importer who first alerted Sanderson, were involved together.

Or, Hansen, like many business owners, probably had financial backers.

Curious you would draw this small comment out of the text. (Head scratch).

[Guest LAL]

If you believe Hansen, he and the anonymous owner. If you believe Sanderson, Hansen and Terry Cullen, the animal importer who first alerted Sanderson, were involved together.

Or, Hansen, like many business owners, probably had financial backers.

Curious you would draw this small comment out of the text. (Head scratch).

Not at all since there's no evidence that I know of other than Dr. Napier's guesswork that Terry Cullen was Frank Hansen's shill.

Hansen's financial backer may have been his bank. He said he had to borrow money for the equipage.

A look at the late Ivan T. Sanderson by Mark Hall:

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/its-hall/

[wolftrax]

Let me ask this, what are the differences people see between the Iceman S&H and Coleman photos, and the West photos.