Today in BF History: JAN 03

The New York Times today in 2003 printed a front page article. In summary it begins with Mr. Wallace, 84, died on Nov. 26 at a nursing home in Centralia, Washington, and continues on...

''This wasn't a well-planned plot or anything,'' said Michael Wallace, one of Ray's sons. ''All it means is that Ray Wallace is dead, not Bigfoot,'' said Dr. Wolf Henner Fahrenbach, a zoologist in the Portland area who is retired from the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center.
Though some Bigfoot believers had long suspected that Mr. Wallace created the tracks, he kept his secret, and his family never confirmed it until his death.
Michael Wallace said his father had a friend carve the feet. Dr. Fahrenbach has tried to prove -- by DNA analysis of hair samples -- that Bigfoot is a species heretofore unknown to science. ''Sasquatch feet grow in substantial excess of general body dimensions,'' Dr. Fahrenbach wrote in one study. ''Hence the justifiable moniker Bigfoot.''
Dr. Meldrum said he was a skeptic until he saw Bigfoot prints, then began collecting and analyzing them. Dr. Meldrum and Dr. Fahrenbach may have some academic investment in Bigfoot, but Dr. Matthew Johnson, a clinical psychologist from Grants Pass, Ore., said his conviction could not be dismissed as scholarly bias.
''Ray Wallace may have indeed hoaxed his own tracks,'' Dr. Johnson said. ''But I can guarantee you that Ray Wallace was not walking around in a nine-foot Bigfoot suit in the Oregon Caves at the age of 82. Since the encounter, Dr. Johnson, now president of the Southern Oregon Bigfoot Society, has led numerous outings to feed and track Bigfoot. What nearly all Bigfoot stories lack is proof: a skeleton or a body, or a picture or film beyond dispute. Bigfoot is among the most camera-elusive of beings.
Filmed in the Six Rivers National Forest in Northern California, not far from where Ray Wallace laid his tracks, the short film shows a bewildered-looking apeman walking upright, while glancing at the camera.
The film has its believers, Dr. Meldrum and Dr. Fahrenbach among them. ''As long as Dad was alive, he was Bigfoot,'' Michael Wallace said