radio shows all the way across the country. and i realized at a point that he was not going to tell anybody that it was a hoax. and i just set back and was watching what he was going to do. and i think that his intentions were that he would get someone to produce a motion picture of bigfoot and he would make a fortune out of it. five years after it debuted on tv, roger patterson dies of cancer. maintaining the film is genuine. in 2002, morris goes public with the story. i started announcing that s the gorilla suit. another 10 or 20 magicians across the country have the same suit. it s not a real bigfoot. but it comes too late for many of the film s believers. people are so taken by the
and skeptics would be dubious about it. i m sitting in my living room at home watching television and the announcer comes on telling a story about these two rodeo cowboys who were out in the forest and ran upon a bigfoot. and i m looking. there s our gorilla suit walking across the screen. originally an entertainer, he makes and sells gorilla costumes. i received a call from this man who says he s roger patterson. do you have a gorilla show? a magician. no? he says we re playing a joke on people. how much is the suit? according to him he had specific requirements for the suit. did it look like a gorilla what about the eyes where you see the eyes?
he called me back and said, listen, you can see the zipper in the back of the suit. i said well, that s easy to overcome. get a hair brush. brush it back and forth across the zipper. that was the last i heard from him. until he sees his suit on tv. i told my wife come here. you want to see this. she walks in and said oh, look. there s our gorilla suit. morris keeps quiet about his involvement hoping that patterson would talk about making the film. i didn t say anything to anybody because i thought our market was for magicians. it would be unethical to sell him a costume and then tell the audience it s a gorilla suit. but patterson earns thousands of dollars selling the rights to the film. and yes, we too, pay for the rights to use it in this episode. he went on television shows,
things they fall for. they re hugely invested in it. now they re fools if they were wrong. and as soon as you come in and rain on their parade, you find utter hostility. the first reaction was no, you re lying. that is a real bigfoot. i said how is it possible that this thing could fool people. the suit was all right. it wasn t the best gorilla suit ever made. but it was okay. but in broad daylight did not look like a real animal. i talked with phil morris about this in retrospect seeing how entrenched this film has become, and he feels he probably should have come forward. we set out to verify morris story and found bob heironimus who says he was in the costume. they have since become friends. he said patterson told him to walk like a gorilla. bob had no idea how it would walk.