Today in BF History: JAN 06

Today in 1997 according to the book Bigfoot Exposed, on a posting to the Internet Virtual Bigfoot Conference, an email based BF research community; Jeff Meldrum stakes much of his academic reputation on the evidence that Paul Freeman has discovered several authentic bigfoot casts from the Blue Mountains near Walla Walla, Washington.
This was a pretty big deal since Jeff Meldrum, a member of the Biological Sciences faculty at Idaho State University and Grover Krantz’s professional heir-apparent in the field of anthropology. Krantz was the first academic scientific university professor to publically support and research the possibility of bigfoot’s existence.
But let’s back up and discuss Paul Freeman the third member of this bizarre love triangle of bigfoot believers.


Paul freeman is described in an AP article.

Freeman, 45, does not seem the type to spook easily. He is beefy, bearded and, at 6-foot-4 and 265 pounds, approaches Sasquatch proportions himself. He's a meat-cutter by trade; an outdoorsman and hunter by nature.

Apparently he put down the butchers knife and started to search for bigfoot. Before his death he had claimed to see bigfoot himself 4 times and has collected more cast, most of them with dermal ridges than any other bigfoot hunter. This brings us back to Meldrum. Meldrum not only stake his good name but also put his money where his mouth is, he ended up buying Freeman’s collection for a sum of nearly 2000 dollars.