Minnesota Ice Man

[kitakaze]

Here you go, LAL...

Thanks for posting that. Heuvelmans, if I'm reading him correctly, thought Hansen was "a simple man" (not a genius). To a carny the ice was necessary for the illusion. To trained zoologists the ice was necessary because the thing was decomposing.

Hansen seemed to tailor his story to his audience (he did tell West the real owner had taken it back when West first talked to him by phone in 2002) but the memory loss suggests there was something wrong. Many things can cause dementia, but thinking back to that quart of gin I'm wondering if he might have had Korsakov's syndrome or something on the way to it. People with Korsakov's tend to confabulate and are extremely convincing. The mind fills in the blanks so the memories are real to the afflicted person. I may be putting 2 and 2 together and getting 5, 6, or even 7, but I'd like to know more.

West also mentioned laws about showing dead bodies being passed in the mid-sixties. These mostly affected the "Baby shows" and pickled punks were replaced by bouncers. The public didn't seem to mind.

Even if the original wasn't smuggled having a dead body in a show could have caused Hansen legal problems.

I have a few more pictures scanned. I'll be posting them soon. This one shows the ice wasn't all that thick (it looks better in the book). In some places it was "clear as air".

Regarding the chest:

In color:

Thanks, ajicani. You described the position of the feet much, much better than I did. These are the diagrams from L’Homme de Néanderthal est toujours vivant. One of the pages caught in the scanner and tore. I'm kind of sick about it but I included the tear rather than 'shop it out. None of these have been edited except for cropping. Sorry some parts of the captions are out of focus. I didn't want to risk another tear by scanning them again.

Sanderson and Heuvelmans were duped by a gaffe.

[kitakaze]

We need to do some thread merging, I think.

[Guest brucescotland]

Guys - Kitakaze in particular, thank you for posts- i never had a clue regarding what you posted.

Looks like "Case closed"

Cant help but feel dissapointed though!!!

[Guest LAL]

Thanks for the thread, brucescotland. This is one of my favorite topics.

The pictures I'd like to post aren't on any prior thread and apparently I never got around to uploading them to Photobucket. Therefore they must still be in the other computer awaiting cropping and uploading. I'll get to it when I have the time.

I just got Myra Shackley's book, Still Living?: Yeti, Sasquatch and the Neanderthal Enigma, and noticed she wrote something about the MIM. It will be interesting to see what she had to say.

The case is far from closed, IMO.

[kitakaze]

You're welcome. Stick a fork in it...

At the time these were new, MIM was a rival to the PGF and Al DeAtley, the partner and promoter of the film with Roger Patterson, noted that when they competed for the same market, the MIM killed the PGF. People were more excited about seeing an apeman in the flesh than seeing one on shaky film. Both of these things were created for the purpose of barnstorming for money.

Frank Hansen died in 2003 and the book did not come out until February 2011. That's almost ten years that the proof of the hoax existed and was not seen by the public until this man exposed it...

From the Amazon review...

"One of my favorite chapters features the Minnesota Iceman, a creature frozen

in a block of ice and display around the country. I saw this controversial exhibit

back in the 1970s and Rick now lets us in on the rest of the story along with photos

of the creature without the ice."

http://www.amazon.ca...s/dp/0764337033

Book Description

Step down a little closer; you don't want to miss a thing. Join fifty-year sideshow veteran, Rick West, on a strange and wonderful trip through behind-the-scenes tales of his life as a showman. The strange, the bizarre, the unusual comprise this engaging memoir bursting at the seams with rare images of two-headed cows, Bigfoot creatures, pickled punks, showgirls, humongous hogs, 3,500-pound steers, and much, much more. From attending the Ozark Empire Fair at age five to revealing the true story behind Frank Hansen's infamous Minnesota Iceman, the author takes the reader into the world of America's sideshows and midway grind shows. It's all here; it's all on the inside. See it now or miss it forever. It's showtime!

http://www.schifferb...n=9780764337031

You will note that like eleven years having passed since we got proof of the extent of Ray Wallace's hoaxing, it has been a year since the proof of the MIM hoax was revealed and we still have people clinging to the hope that Hansen just made a replica of the real thing. This is similar to the suggestion that if Roger is found to have been in possession of a female Bigfoot suit, it would likely be just because he was trying to lure a male Bigfoot and it's not what we see in the PGF.

It is disappointing for many the MIM in the end has been exposed as a hoax, but we are all better for learning the truth.

[Guest LAL]

This is one of my favorite articles on the subject:

THE MINNESOTA ICEMAN: NEW LOOK AT OLD EXHIBIT

It is time to update the old Iceman story and remind younger researchers of it.

It is remarkable that the Iceman started its "career" the same year as Patterson's Bigfoot movie. According to anthropologist Dr. John Napier, "At the beginning of the summer of 1967" Frank Hansen "started touring the Iceman"(BIGFOOT, 1973, p.109).

Both the Iceman and the movie are still officially believed to be a fake. But if the film subject is taken now as real by the majority of bigfoot researchers, the Iceman is denied authenticity by most of them, in spite of the fact that the Iceman initially made a louder noise in science than the Bigfoot film. Here is a quote from the article by Magnus Linklater "Neanderthal Man?" published by The Sunday Times of London on March 23, 1969: “A strange ape-like creature frozen in a block of ice is providing American anthropologists with one of the most intriguing questions they have faced in recent years. Is it a fraud, a freak, or is it a form of human being believed to have been extinct since prehistoric times? One thing is certain: it has two large bullet-holes in it. Just as a precaution the FBI have been called in...â€

Hansen by the frozen body of the supposed homin

Dr. Ivan Sanderson examined the specimen very

attentively and made all

the possible measurements of it

The concluding lines of the article ran as follows: "Whatever the explanation, a capital crime may have been committed. Accordingly the FBI has been informed. However fanciful all these suggestions, the anthropological world may be on the verge of one of the most exciting discoveries in the study of man. Dr Heuvelmans's ape-man might just provide the evidence of a missing link in the evolution of man. Even if it doesn't it could become as great a cause celebre as the Piltdown Man."

The Iceman owes its "cause celebre" status to Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson, the founding fathers of cryptozoology, and in part to Boris Porshnev, the father of hominology. In February 1969, Heuvelmans published, in the Bulletin of the Royal Institute of Natural Sciences of Belgium, a paper entitled, "Notice on a specimen preserved in ice of an unknown form of living hominid: Homo pongoides." Later, in 1974, he devoted a voluminous book to the case, "L'Homme de Neanderthal est toujours vivant" (Neanderthal Man is still alive).

F

rom left to right: Photo made by Dr. Heuvelmans composed of four pieces in the same scale;

drawing by Dr. Sanderson;

drawing of the body by Alisa Lindberg

Drawings by Heuvelmans (left);

Schoenherr (U.S.A.)

and by P. Avotin (U.S.S.R.),

based on the Heuvelmans’ photo

Creature’s image by A. Lindberg

Sanderson committed his findings to paper in the report "Preliminary Description of the External Morphology of What Appears to be the Fresh Corpse of a Hitherto Unknown Form of Living Hominid" (Genus, Vol. XXV, N.1-4,1969). Porshnev's role lies in the fact that Heuvelmans referred to Porshnev's ideas in claiming the present-day survival of Neanderthal man, supposedly evidenced by the Iceman. Porshnev in turn dwelt in length on the case in the Russian popular press and asked a very pertinent question: If the Iceman is a model, WHAT is it a model of?

The relevance of this question became especially clear with the publication in FATE (March 1982) of the piece, "The Iceman Goeth", in which debunkers referred to one Howard Ball, "who died several years ago" and who "made models for Disneyland." "He made (the Iceman) here in his studio in Torrance (Calif.)," Ball's widow Helen told Emery. "The man who commissioned it said he was going to encase it in ice and pass it off, I think, as a prehistoric man." Ball's son Kenneth helped his father build the figure.

He says its "skin" is half-inch-thick rubber. "We modeled it after an artist's conception of Cro-Magnon man and gave it a broken arm and a bashed-in skull with one eye popped out." (p.59).

That the Iceman is a model of Cro-Magnon man is sheer nonsense and the height of anthropological ignorance. There exists no artist's conception even of Neanderthal man as hairy as the Iceman. A "prehistoric man" of this kind was only posited by Boris Porshnev's anthropological theory, which was not widely known at the time and is not recognized even today. So the question persists: If the original Iceman is a model, WHAT is it a model of?

But the most crucial question concerns the exhibit's authenticity. There are two episodes in the story which seem to indicate more than anything else that what originally lay in the ice was not a fabrication. In July1989, Minnesota sasquatch researcher Mike Quast visited and interviewed Frank Hansen at his ranch. In his good book, "The Sasquatch in Minnesota"(1996), Mike has this to say on the matter:

Heuvelmans (on right) with Dr. Boris Porshnev

"The reports published by Sanderson and Heuvelmans brought an incredible amount of attention Hansen's way, much to his anger because he had insisted on no publicity when he allowed them to examine the Iceman. He was particularly upset with Heuvelmans, whose report appeared first.

"According to Hansen, what does not appear in either scientist's report is just how they became convinced the Iceman was real. To get the best possible view of it they had hung bright lights over the glass under which it lay, and while Hansen was away from them for a moment one of them placed one of the hot lights directly on the ice cold glass. It shattered, and a pungent odor like that of rotting flesh rose from the ice. This convinced them that an actual corpse, freshly killed, lay before them. Hansen will never forget what the distinguished scientists said when he reminded them of their promise not to publicize the story at that point. 'We are scientists first,' they told him, 'and gentlemen second.' (He doesn't say exactly which one of them said this.)" (p.144).

Ivan Sanderson, in his report, refers to this important incident in this way: "The corpse or whatever it is, is rotting. This could be detected by a strong stench -- typical of rotting mammalian flesh - exuding from one of the corners of the insulation of the coffin. Whatever this corpse may be, it would seem to include flesh of some kind" (Genus, p.253).

Why did Hansen insist on no publicity when he allowed the two scientists to examine his exhibit? How could publicity from such examination harm his carnival sideshow business? And why did publication of the scientists' conclusion that the corpse was real cause the showman's anger? The answer is in Magnus Linklater's words cited above: "a capital crime may have been committed". This must have been the reason for Hansen's subsequent actions, maneuvers, and conflicting stories. Let us also note one of his recurring statements that was as little believed as all his other declarations, namely, that the Iceman did not belong to him but to a millionaire in California.

A second episode indicating the Iceman's reality happened in July 1969 when, after a tour of Canada with his exhibit, Hansen was held up by US customs officials at a border post in North Dakota. The episode was related by Sanderson to Heuvelmans and is mentioned in the latter's book (pp.283-84). Customs demanded from Hansen special permission by the US Surgeon General for carrying the corpse of a "humanoid creature". Hansen argued that it was not a real corpse but a "fabricated illusion" made of latex rubber and offered documents of its fabrication. That did not impress the officials, who demanded that a piece of the Iceman be taken for examination. Hansen protested, saying this would damage the exhibit.

In desperation he even phoned Sanderson and asked for advice. The latter, thinking that this time Hansen toured the model, advised that the customs x-ray the exhibit, to which suggestion Hansen cried out: "Impossible! The owner will never allow this!" (My translation from the French. - D.B.).(Heuvelmans remarks in brackets that there was no need to inform and ask the owner because x-rays leave no traces). Hansen then sought by phone the help of the Iceman's owner in California, as well as that of his own Senator in Washington, Walter F. Mondale, subsequently US Vice-President in Carter's Administration. Twenty four hours later Hansen was released with the Iceman unchecked.

To quote Mike Quast again: "Some call the Iceman by the name 'Bozo', a carnival clown, nothing more. To most serious investigators now that's all he was -- a phony, no more real than a mannequin. He has, for the most part, been written off as a big joke. But the joke is on them, because the Iceman was real." (p.143). "At the 1967 Arizona State Fair he (Hansen) met a man who to this day he will not name, but he says 'It was a name I recognized immediately,' and that it was someone connected to the entertainment industry. The man said he had a very interesting specimen in storage in California and asked Hansen to consider taking it on a carnival tour. Shortly thereafter, in Long Beach, Hansen first laid eyes on the Iceman.

"The man explained that an agent of his had discovered the creature in its frozen state in a refrigeration plant in Hong Kong and that it had originally been found floating in the sea by Chinese fishermen in a 6,000-pound ice block. He was a deeply religious man, Hansen explained, and he thought this creature seemed to go against the theory of creation as told in the Bible, thus he wanted no connection to it. Hansen agreed to display it, but first the ice was temporarily shaved down for his benefit and he saw that it was indeed a real corpse, not a fake.

"Hansen was given permission to use whatever phony advertising he wished in order to draw crowds. Stories about 'Bigfoot' in the news at that time helped as well, and the display was very popular. (...) After some time, however, Hansen began to worry that he might get into serious legal trouble if what he had turned out to be a human corpse. So, returning to California, he had a replica manufactured from latex rubber and hair, intending to switch it with the original if he ever had to."(pp.143-44).

In 1994, Quast got a surprise when Hansen himself gave him a call. "But the biggest surprise came when he said that he had recently heard from the real owner of the Iceman, who he had not talked to in a long time and didn't even know if the man was still living. He still wouldn't name him, of course, but he said the owner claimed to still be in possession of the original Iceman and that it was still frozen and in good condition. Also, he might (just might) consider presenting it to the public once again in the near future. Well, that was a couple of years ago. No word yet. (...) The last word, however, belongs to that anonymous owner, who once stated to Hansen that if he was ever identified he would dump the Iceman in the Pacific Ocean." (p.146).

Having read all that, I contacted Mike Quast in 2002 and in April received a letter from him, with the last paragraph reading as follows: "I have had one theory - and that is all it is - about who the anonymous owner of the Iceman might have been. I am not saying that I necessarily believe it as fact, but the only name that comes to mind is the late actor Jimmy Stewart. Hansen said it was someone in the entertainment industry and that when he met him it was a name he 'recognized immediately', and that the man did not want to be publicly identified with the Iceman because of his strong religious beliefs. I believe Stewart was known as being rather religious, was a world traveler, and he did have some interest in such subjects as he was involved with Peter Byrne and Tom Slick in getting a yeti hand smuggled out of Nepal (according to Loren Coleman's book on Tom Slick). Stewart was still alive when Hansen told me he had just been in touch with the owner, but died a couple of years later. That is the only idea I have come up with ... If investigators visit Hansen today, they might try mentioning this theory to him and just studying what his reaction is to the name."

I heartily thanked Mike Quast for the information in his book and the theory in his letter, and proposed to Alan Berry to try and verify that theory with a visit to Hansen and one more interview. Alan was too busy to go to Minnesota, but interviewed Hansen by phone on April 7, 2002. Here are some excerpts from that interview:

Berry: What do you think the Iceman represented?

Hansen: I can tell you I don't associate it with Bigfoot.

B: You mean if it was real?

H: Yeah ... well, I mean if it was real, I would think of it like might be some kind of early man, but I don't know.

B: What did the owner tell you about where it came from?

H: He was in the business of producing movies, and he (?) was in the Tokyo(?) bay area, and saw a block of ice with this thing in it. He asked the fishermen, "What do you want for it?" They dickered and he ended up trading a case of whisky for it. He said he didn't know what it was, just that it was interesting and something his people might use, you know, as a prop. The owner leased space with refrigeration on a ship and the block of ice with the Iceman was shipped to the U.S.

B: What was the owner's interest in exhibiting the Iceman?

H: Just to see what the public would think of it ... what kind of furor or controversy it might create. He wasn't looking for anything out of it himself. He was a religious man. He just wanted to see how people would react if they thought there was really a primitive form of man that came before us in time, you know, evolution and such...

B: What kind of person was the owner?

H: He was very, very religious. He didn't want the Iceman exhibited as anything real, only wanted the public's reaction. Like could it be something almost human from prehistoric times?

B: Who was the owner?

H: I can't tell you, I am under oath. I can just tell you that he was a big name... Anybody would recognize his name right away today even, but he's dead. He passed away.

B: What had become of the body?

H: I tried to take it (the exhibit) into Canada for a show, was stopped at the border. It was the Bureau of Customs, and they stopped me because they thought I was transporting cadaver across the border. It was seized at the border. I explained to them it was just an exhibit, neither man nor beast, but they didn't believe me until a US Senator bailed me out. Because of, who was he, Irene? Well, I was a good friend of him, and had given him a lucrative donation, yes, it was a Senator in Washington. It was through Walter Mondale, the Senator, that they got an order from Agriculture and Forest Products to "let them go." After the border incident and with "all the people" that were after me, I got tired of the whole thing and phoned the owner to take back the Iceman.

It is most important that Hansen confirmed the border incident of which we learned first from Heuvelmans, even though there are certain differences with Heuvelmans's words in Hansen's description. Why did he mention Tokyo instead of Hong Kong as the place where the Iceman came from? Was his memory failing?

In September, 2002, Dr.Peter Rubec talked to Hansen on the phone. Here's a quote from Rubec's email to me: "I did ask Hansen about Jimmy Stewart. There was a fairly long pause, but all he would say is that the owner of the real Iceman (he was fairly emphatic there was a real one) was in the movie industry and had died. But he would not reveal who it was."

I then discussed the matter with Loren Coleman who, when writing his book about Tom Slick, had contact with Stewart. Loren confirmed to me that the latter was very religious and referred to the opinion of Mark Hall, who had two separate interviews with Frank Hansen in the 1990s: "It appeared the owner did not value it (the Iceman) in the way many of us would... The true owner of the Iceman did not want to be the one who presented the 'missing link' that would undercut the truth of Biblical creation. The owner was interested in seeing people's reaction to the 'missing link' and so allowed the Iceman to be displayed" (Living Fossils, 1999, p.85)."Mark Hall senses,†wrote Loren to me, “that the mysterious owner was a pro-creationist."

I then addressed Peter Byrne, saying that I've been trying to crack the Iceman riddle in recent years, urging Krantz, Greenwell and others to do so while Hansen was alive, and continued, in part: "When I read The Sasquatch in Minnesota by your friend and follower Mike Quast I asked him to help. And he did by supplying information about Hansen which is not in the book. In his letter he shared with me his opinion and hypothesis regarding Jimmy Stewart. So the credit for it goes to him."

Peter Byrne wrote back on August 30, 2003: "Your hypothesis concerning an Iceman connection with Jimmy Stewart is very interesting and indeed is one that has surfaced previously, mainly because of my connection with him going back to Yeti and Himalayan days. So, let me talk with some family members and what they have to contribute to it and then I will get back to you."

His email of September 4 added this: "In the matter of the Iceman these leads definitely need to be examined and followed up; as you say, anything is possible and actually there is a faint but persistent rumour in entertainment circles that Jimmy Stewart did have an association of some kind with some large and mysterious animal." The email of October 30 said the following: "As of now I do not have a lot to report. There are, as I said previously, grounds to believe that Jimmy Stewart was definitely connected/associated to/with a large animal of some kind; however there are conflicting reports on exactly what it was. This (confliction) of course could be part of a cover up; it is my finding that in many cases families of people who have these associations like to have them brushed under the carpet, so to speak, after they (the finders or investigators) pass away. This was indeed the case with Tom Slick whose family, after he died, seem to have destroyed all of the evidence that he gathered on the Bigfoot mystery and whose foundation, the South West Research Institute of San Antonio, Texas, now state that they had nothing to do with his BF research when in fact some of the expense and salary checks that I received when I ran the first northern California Bigfoot project were on the institute's bank account. So it may be the same thing with the Stewart family."

As of today, I have not heard from Peter Byrne anything more on the Jimmy Stewart connection.

The latest information on the Iceman that reached me comes from Curt Nelson who on April 11, 2005 emailed me the following:

"I live in Minnesota just north of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Hansen, I'd heard (from Mike Quast), was last known to live near the small town of Rollingstone, about 100 miles south of me. I drove down there in February just to see if I might find him (the phone number for Hansen Mike Quast provided me was no longer in service). In the town of Altura (a few miles from Rollingstone), I stopped at a bank and went in and inquired about Hansen, about his whereabouts. The woman (a bank teller) I spoke to said she knew where Hansen's home was but that he was gone, that he died two years prior. She said that his wife and son still lived in the area, though, and she looked them up in the phone directory for me. (...)

I went out into the parking lot of the bank and called Mrs. Hansen (Irene) using my cell phone, and I reached her. She was not enthusiastic about talking about The Iceman but she did speak to me for about 5 minutes. (...) She said her husband died with the secret as to the true story on the Iceman, that even she didn't know it. She seemed to think that was quite appropriate and she seemed sincere about it. And at least twice she said, in reference to the secrecy surrounding the Iceman, that it was 'to protect the innocent ones.'

"The son is an attorney and I reached him at work just after speaking to his mother. He was in a bad mood in the first place, I would say, and was just barely polite to me on the subject of his father's iceman. (I'm sure the Hansen family has been bothered plenty about it over the years.) He told me the second body, the one widely thought to have been an obvious fake, was gone. That it had been cleared out long ago.

"I called Mrs. Hansen back again while driving home to ask for a clarification on something (can't recall what just now), and she asked me if I knew Roger Patterson. She said she and her husband visited Patterson in California. She just volunteered that, seemingly just to make conversation. She didn't remember anything about the meeting, but it tells me Frank Hansen had an interest in bigfoot. I find that interesting -- that the carnival man showing off The Iceman would look up a man who claimed to have filmed a bigfoot, a man thousands of miles away in California. It suggests to me that Frank Hansen believed what he had might be a bigfoot. (If Hansen's body was a fake why would he be interested in bigfoot?)

"In summary here is what I took away from my conversations with Irene Hansen and her son: Nothing is final, it is still all a mystery. (...) The son is a lawyer and if there is a concern about legal issues (the creature might be considered human) he has certainly counseled his mother on how to answer questions -- with no real answers. It seems to me that the simplest truth behind this story would be that it was all a hoax perpetrated solely by Frank Hansen. If that were true why, decades later, wouldn't he and now his family just say, forget it, it was just a carnival trick!(?) (...) Please feel free to use what I've told you in any way you like."

Thank you very much, Curt Nelson, for your most important information. It is news to hominologists that Frank Hansen has died. Regrettably, the event passed unnoticed two years ago. I agree with your inferences and conclusions, especially the one concerning Hansen's visit to Patterson in California, which is a big surprise. The news should be verified and discussed with Patricia Patterson. You are right, if the Iceman was a fake why would Hansen be interested in Bigfoot? He must have been interested in Bigfoot because he was keenly interested in the exact nature of the carnival exhibit he displayed. Was it a human or non-human primate? The very legal status of the exhibit depended on the answer. The leading Bigfoot researchers, such as John Green and Grover Krantz, called Bigfoot an ape, a giant non-human primate. Was it not for this reason that Hansen for a time presented the Iceman as a bigfoot he himself killed during a hunt in Minnesota? The different signs he used for the exhibit in sideshows are also indicative in this connection: "What is it?", "Siberskoye Creature", "Found in the Woods of Minnesota", "Is it Prehistoric?"

The question "What is it?" must have been heavy on his mind when he allowed Sanderson and Heuvelmans to examine his exhibit and asked them not to publicize their findings. Heuvelmans's published conclusion that it was the corpse of a killed Neanderthal Man must have alarmed Hansen a lot. From his words to Alan Berry, "I don't associate it with Bigfoot" and "it might be some kind of early man", we can conclude that Heuvelmans's verdict stuck in Hansen's mind and determined his words and actions to the end.

Of special interest are Irene Hansen's words that the secrecy surrounding the Iceman serves "to protect the innocent ones". This brings up the question: And who are "the guilty ones"? They can well be inferred from Hansen's own words. First, the Iceman owner who smuggled a corpse into the U.S. and kept it illegally; second, Frank Hansen who displayed a smuggled dead body without permission; third, ex-Vice-President Walter Mondale through whom Customs got an order to let a cadaver across the US-Canada border.

And who are "the innocent ones"? Apparently the families of the guilty ones. They know the truth and for obvious reasons are determined to keep it secret, no matter what detriment to science.

Mike Quast again: "It is certainly a case that seems to deserve any researcher's undivided attention, for in it we supposedly have what Bigfoot people have sought for so many years: the actual corpse of a hair-covered humanoid" (p.137). I am convinced now that the words "we supposedly have" could be changed to "we do have" if not for the fact that the actual corpse is still out of our reach. As I wrote not so long ago, "The negative impact of indifference on one side, and hidden or open hostility on the other, leaves the tiny number of hominologists little chance to quickly obtain traditionally acceptable biological proof." The Iceman case illustrates this point with utmost clarity.

Let us note that after Sanderson and Heuvelmans the case was followed up and bits of truth gleaned and collected not by scientific institutions, such as the Smithsonian or the International Society of Cryptozoology, whose express task was to investigate such cases, but by private researchers, such as Mark Hall, Mike Quast, Alan Berry, & Curt Nelson. Well, long live private enterprise!

I wish the Stewart connection would finally be established. I wish its confirmation for two reasons. First, to the usual question "Where is hard evidence?" we'd have a ready answer: "Ask the Stewart family." Second, I'd offer Hollywood a scenario of a film, based on facts stranger than fiction, from the scene of getting the body of an ape-man for a case of whisky to the final shots of dumping it in the Pacific Ocean. The story would be the opposite of the Piltdown Man. In the latter a fake was used to fool scientists. In my scenario a Hollywood pro-creationist film star makes the anthropological world on the verge of one of the most exciting discoveries in the study of man take a real "missing link" for a "fabricated illusion." The film would be titled, “The Carnival Cover-up.â€

P.S. All are free to publish this text or post on a web site.

^© Cryptosphere Fund

[kitakaze]

The case is far from closed, IMO.

And there you have it...

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.

It could not be more tightly closed if you tried. We can literally see in front of our faces that what is being examined by Heuvelmans and Sanderson is the exact same thing in the exact same case.

[Guest LAL]

I posted this on the other thread but I think it's worth repeating. Animal X on the MIM:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzGZkv4Sxn8

BTW, Peter Byrne told me in an e-mail that Jimmy Stewart had nothing to do with it - he'd have known about it if he had.

[kitakaze]

LAL, you've basically set your self up to be impervious to the thing being found and photographed, impervious to Hansen tell completely contradictory stories about where he got it, and impervious to an admission of hoaxing. You can see plain as day that what Heuvelmans and Sanderson examined in the ice is the same thing West photographed at Hansens's home. You've essentially covered all of Hansen's bases for him. Really, now, it's over. You can let go. Hoaxers should not have it made so easy for them.

[Guest Transformer]

+1 for Tontar by me because he hit the nail on the head. I think that a lot of people in everyday life will try to reshape or invent excuses to reinforce a belief in order to work their way around a strong case made against what they believe to be true and this type of behavior is certainly not just seen in the world of sasquatch investigations. Nobody likes to be mistaken in their beliefs and a last ditch effort to try and get around pesky facts should be understood and not criticized too strongly as people need time to adjust to a new way to look at things. Besides I think that the possibility of sasquatch existing does not just hinge on just one thing or another and that losing one particular piece of evidence or another is not enough to declare the entire sasquatch issue solved no more than one piece or type of anecdotal evidence is positive proof of the existence of sasquatch either.

[Guest LAL]

Apparently depictions of violent encounters between man and snowman are fairly common in folk art. This is a walrus tusk (In The Footsteps of the Russian Snowman by Dmitri Bayanov,, pages 228-229):

If something like the illustration on the walrus tusk happened and the "snowman", if a real creature, fell forward that could account for the very pug nose. It could have broken and was pushed up.

According to a caption in Shackley's book she apparently thought the MIM was probably a latex model, but she mentions the Russian trawler (Sanderson says "sealer") story as being first. Interestingly, I ran across a statement somewhere on the Net from someone who claimed to have seen it on a Russian trawler. I wasn't involved in any bigfoot discussions at the time, had not yet discovered BFF1 and didn't think to bookmark it. I remembered the MIM from the Argosy story from having picked up a copy at a newsstand, probably in Portland, Oregon, but hadn't seen much about it since. Sometime in my surfing I ran across the Unmuseum article and thought the whole thing was a proven "hoax". Oh, well.

It wasn't until I got into a discussion on BFF1 and began looking into it that I began to doubt that. The original disappeared (although Peter Byrne has had e-mails from people claiming they've seen it long after it was supposed to have been destroyed and it may even have been spotted in Russia) so that DNA Verne Langdon thought should have been grabbed (in 1968? 20 years before testing?) may never surface, but stranger things have happened. Heck, even the Pamboche finger showed up eventually.

When I posted the pictures Rick West took I thought people would see immediately how different they are from the Argosy pictures. One thing that really stuck me was the V-shaped creases in the cheek. They're quite distinct

but not noted in the drawing by Alika Lindberg done under Heuvelmans' direction

nor do they appear in the photo from the other side Coleman took that was thought to be of Hansen's model because of the 15 differences (Heuvelmans thought Hansen had just rearranged the corpse):

Sanderson noted folds around the mouth but there's nothing about V-shaped creases in the cheek.

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/argosy2.htm

Shackley also mentioned the "improbable mix" of human and ape. I think that was said by Napier, but the old Up From the Apes linear model still prevailed and Lucy's knee was a few years in the future. The "mix" isn't at all improbable for the Australopithecines and their relatives.

[Guest LAL]

Here's a scan of Alika with her life-sized drawing of "Bozo" from L'homme de Néanderthal est toujours vivant by Bernard Heuvelmans:

Edited April 21, 2012 by LAL

[Guest Transformer]

H: I tried to take it (the exhibit) into Canada for a show, was stopped at the border. It was the Bureau of Customs, and they stopped me because they thought I was transporting cadaver across the border. It was seized at the border. I explained to them it was just an exhibit, neither man nor beast, but they didn't believe me until a US Senator bailed me out. Because of, who was he, Irene? Well, I was a good friend of him, and had given him a lucrative donation, yes, it was a Senator in Washington. It was through Walter Mondale, the Senator, that they got an order from Agriculture and Forest Products to "let them go." After the border incident and with "all the people" that were after me, I got tired of the whole thing and phoned the owner to take back the Iceman.

I hope people will understand that nobody in the US government has any pull or ability to tell Canadian Customs or Border Agents what to do or who to show favoritism to. Hansen would have been dealing with the Canadians not Americans if he was attempting to enter Canada and would have been on Canadian soil when dealing with them because that is how bordr crossings are set up. Canadians are like Americans and most nations when it comes to people trying to tell them what to do with their own laws in their own country and the Canadian Customs agents wouldn't have cared about some senator getting his knickers in a knot because they were Canadians enforcing Candian laws in Canada. I think the story about the "border incident" is complete nonsense unless somebody can show me how a reversal of how the border system actually works between the US and Canada somehow occurred that one time and I will have to see the papaerwork because there would have been tons of paperwork involved.

[Guest LAL]

I have no doubt Hansen altered his stories to fit his audience. Napier thought the FBI should investigate. The FBI apparently didn't think so but "Investigated by the FBI" went up on the exhibit anyway.

I don't have Pye's book and after pricing it used on Amazon doubt I ever will. Can you tell us what Pye said about it, brucescotland?

[Drew]

Well, the Iceman is up for sale.

Looks like the original. Check out the case, and then scroll up the frame looks the same

http://doubtfulnews.com/2013/02/step-right-up-and-see-the-minnesota-iceman-up-for-auction/