According to bigfoot author Joshua Blu Buhs, the late Dr. George Allen Agogino acted as a consultant for Tom Slick's North American Expeditions, as he had for other Slick expeditions primarily in the Himalaya. Buhs writes that noted eminent scholar and archaeologist Dr. Agogino suspected that "some of the hunters were pulling a con," Bob Titmus in particular.

Agogino, at the Department of Anthropology at Eastern New Mexico University, heard rumors that the feces Bob Titmus found in California showed the presence of unknown parasites.

But the well-respected naturalist and highly educated Ivan Sanderson later found that the droppings submitted by Titmus actually came from a moose. 

Moreover, the alleged Bigfoot hair Titmus found also came from a moose. Sanderson wondered if Titmus was faking data because California has no moose habitat, that's right, there are no moose in California, certainly no moose in or around Bluff Creek, Calif.

PHOTO: An older photo of Titmus holding a 1958 cast. Courtesy Peter Guttilla. -->

It became apparent the hair/fur couldn't have been picked up mistakenly but as a taxidermist, Titmus had ready access to it. Professor W.C. Ostman-Hill also analyzed the Titmus scat said that it was best not to comment on it.

Time passed, then Dr. Agogino indicated that some of the field cameras had been tripped and the film removed as if to destroy an incriminating photo.

Could Titmus have been faking evidence? "It seems plausible," Buhs writes in this book, "Bigfoot: the life and times of a legend."

“Titmus had the means and plenty of opportunities and he had a motive: Titmus was profiting from selling Bigfoot prints and being paid to hunt (by Slick and others); he had gotten his name in the newspapers and may have even felt a jolt of perverse satisfaction at having fooled so many people," Blu Buhs wrote.

Continuing on, Buhs writes: "These benefits would only continue as long as enough of the right people believed that bigfoot existed, as long as evidence continued to accumulate. He may or may not have faked the tracks by Killinger and Skidmore -- there were too many suspects for that crime - but he (Titmus) had ample opportunity to shape them so that they seemed to be just like the ones he had found the previous November. Titmus had a paternal interest in those smaller tracks and made certain that they would not be mistaken for any other prints. On the cast that he gave to Slick he wrote: "This is the 15" track -- not to be confused with the 16" track." "

Betty Allen said that Titmus had made much of these smaller tracks at this Halloween meeting with Slick. It could have been just pride in finding something so unusual, but given that the moose hair and the droppings indicated there had been deliberate FRAUD, there is reason to suspect other, less noble motives."

Titmus also made other questionable claims later including saying that he had actually seen a bigfoot himself back in the 1940's but had been so traumatized that he suppressed the memory for decades. (Buhs)

John Green records that Bob Titmus interviewed two witnesses who shot at a sasquatch at Hartley Bay on an island near Bella Coola in 1967. The creature is said to have screamed and then fled. The witnesses were unable to find a the body of the creature. - - John Kirk: "When I passed through Hartley Bay in the 1990's, I remember it as a quiet little hamlet; a sort of two-boat tie-up with scattered log pilings around dotted with a few homes, the roof tops barely visible from shore in the huge pine trees. If that event ever happened, once again Titmus provided no evidence of it and nobody in Hartley Bay mentioned knowing Bob Titmus when I inquired about Sasquatch sightings in that inlet."

It is unfortunate that Ivan Sanderson didn't seem bothered by the Bob Titmus shenanigans.

All indications are that John Green's great friend Bob Titmus was in retrospect, a dishonest manipulator of evidence; apparently both may turn out to be frauds if Green's part in the Patterson cover-up story holds up. Green already produced one fraudulent letter in an effort to indicate Titmus was in Kitimat and not at Bluff Creek. Since there are photographs of the two of them together on the wide spot at Bluff Creek, that bit of deception didn't work for Green neither could he produce a postal stamped envelope that went with the letter believed to have been typed on Green's old typewriter after it was compared to other letters.

Of course, news that Robert Merle Titmus wasn't quite on the up and up as a field man was made public by the well-traveled, big-game hunter author Peter Byrne in his review of Slick's expedition in the Pacific Northwest in California in 2009. Byrne's exposé on Titmus is uploaded here: http://www.bigfootencounters.com/stories/byrne_on_titmus.htm

It took a special rare act of courage for Byrne to out Bob Titmus for what he really was… Titmus no hero in my eyes, since there was evidence that he was out to milk Slick for all he could get money-wise, producing essentially nothing of substance in return for the monthly stipend he received from Slick.

I have in my files a letter from John Green, several letters in fact, where he ends up threatening my reputation if I didn't remove from my website, Peter Byrne's exposé on Bob Titmus and he told me more than once to take it down off my website. By what right, I wondered? 

In those private letters John Green out-and-out called Byrne “a liar” in both content and in subject line. I responded by asking him what part was a lie and John responded with charges made by Titmus against Byrne; John had no charges of his own.

Again I replied asking John what in his estimation (not Titmus') did he feel Byrne had lied? Green did not respond directly but sent me a letter from Ivan Sanderson where Sanderson quotes members of a Himalayan expedition who felt Byrne or actually “the Byrne boys” weren't on the up and up in Sanderson's typical English fashion. In the letter Sanderson takes the position of a tattletale asking Green not to reveal who told him but Green does, making them both look foolish.

At this point, I had Sanderson's hearsay from words he overheard and verbiage from Titmus (then dead 12 years) charging Byrne was a liar but no reasons whatsoever from John to explain why he personally felt Byrne had lied. John didn't come up with one reason on his own but continued citing other people and gossip and ordering me to take down Byrne's writing on Titmus; I refused.

In all of this I recalled conversation after conversation with Rene Dahinden where he called John Green a crook, a dirty liar and a rip-off artist. At the time, I had no interest in their personal war.

Was the charge Green made of Peter Byrne more of Green's sham; his hatred of Peter Byrne is well known in bigfoot circles, in fact Green in his weight-swinging way, threatened to pull his photographs, text and his name from the publication "Meet the Sasquatch," which he co-authored with Christopher L. Murphy in 2004 if Murphy dared to publish one word about Byrne; talk about childish moves by John Green!!

The bigfoot community was appalled that Byrne was omitted and even more shocked that Green would make such a childish, selfish demand.  I could only conclude that it was more of Green's professional jealousies at play, considering all the old timers who held John deceptive… including his old research buddy, Rene Dahinden who said more than once when referring to John Green,  "I am working on a book of exposés of all the dirty lies/fabrications/theft/fraud and all the crooked dealings that went on in this research going back to 1957. A real exposé of all the crooks and liars and all the rip-off artists etc." (Dahinden)

Apparently, the whole lot of men in early-day research, including those who follow them today are so corrupt, we shouldn't believe anything they say and little about anything they publish.

The Byrne exposé on Titmus is still uploaded on Bigfootencounters website; I think in light of what Joshua Blu Buhs uncovered in his investigation, the Byrne characterization of Titmus appears accurate and until someone proves otherwise, or gives me a plausible explanation of why it should be questioned, it will stay uploaded.

We should all be grateful for the insight into some of the twisted research done by those who went before us. I am learning to question everything that went before me. …Bobbie Short, October 2010 
- ---
Taken in part from the pages 105-6-7 ABSMERY from the book,
"Bigfoot: the life and times of a legend" 2009 - by Joshua Blu Buhs."

Citation: tapes and various correspondence from Rene Dahinden, John Green & Peter Byrne


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