Bigfoot Encounters.com
"THE
ZOOBIES "
Alpine, California Interview by phone 1992
Original Report by Ken Coon in the early '70's
MONEYMAKER:
Okay, just go ahead and tell me about yourself, when you started working there
and so on.
HUSE:
I started working the Alpine area (east of San Diego, California) in March
of 1970. I came to the
department the previous year. I was working out there in a patrol capacity
for the San Diego County Sheriffs Department I was a deputy at the time and
actually worked Alpine for about 2 years, from March of 1970 to April of 1972.
As far as trying to recall exactly when this went down, the best I can come
up with is that it was after the Laguna fire of 1970 ... September of 1970.
MONEYMAKER:
The Laguna fire affected which areas?
HUSE:
Well, it was the largest brush fire at the time in California history, and
burned specifically in the Sweetwater River area from east of Alpine all the
way south and west, probably another 15 miles. It was quite an extensive burn
and through the area in question, Alpine, on the south side of Interstate
8. To recall the chain of events, it was extremely cold which means the time
of year would've been sometime after September of 1970, probably December
or January, maybe February...let's see, that would be 1971 ... well, it was
definitely winter.
MONEYMAKER:
Was that about the time of your first contact with the key witness, Dr. Baddour
(prominent San Diego psychiatrist)?
HUSE:
Yes, and I don't recall the reason, but Dr. Baddour was stopped by a two-man
patrol unit. Baddour was traveling eastbound, which would've been from the
San Diego area to what we learned later was his home in Alpine. On the front
seat of his car, I don't remember what kind of car it was, he had a loaded.44
magnum revolver with a 6-inch barrel. That's the same type of gun that Dirty
Harry made famous. It's the largest caliber hand gun you can buy. Of course
this piqued our interest a little bit. I wasn't the contact, I was what we
call the cover during this particular stop. My partner's the one who made
first contact and found the gun. He secured the revolver and was asking the
doctor, who'd identified himself as Dr. Baddour, why he was carrying the weapon.
Baddour said it was because of a ... and I don't know what he actually said
at the time, but my partner heard him say, "Zoobie," ..and so from
there on all our conversations throughout the department referred to whatever
Dr. Baddour had seen as a Zoobie. That wasn't what the doctor actually called
it, I don't believe, but that's what my partner heard and that's how the name
got coined.
MONEYMAKER:
At the time did Dr. Baddour describe this Zoobie to the officer?
HUSE:
Yes, he did, to both of us as a matter of fact. He described the Zoobie as
a large, upright, walking hairy creature. Dr. Baddour convinced us and later
other members of my department, including one of my patrol sergeants, that
in truth he'd had three separate encounters with the Zoobies.
MONEYMAKER:
Did Dr. Baddour say how many of these Zoobies there were and where the sightings
happened?
HUSE:
Yeah, one sighting was made by his entire family within the confines of his
yard and immediate area, and at one time they saw three Zoobies. What Dr.
Baddour described to us was what he assumed was a father, mother and child
with the largest of the Zoobies being over 6 feet tall, maybe 7 feet tall.
The tallest was very hairy and much larger-framed than an ordinary man. What
he described as the mother was about 5 feet tall, and the smaller one was
about 3 or 4 feet tall. Like I said, the doctor convinced a number of us that
he'd in fact seen something unusual. What happened then was that we did get
involved in an investigation of the sightings. I did because of the shift
I worked which was either 10 p.m. at night to 6 a.m., or what we called the
evening or overlap shift which was from 6 p.m. to 2:30 in the morning. Neither
of those shifts was conducive to interviewing citizens in the area, so I wasn't
able to locate other witnesses, and I can't recall if I ever talked, to a
deputy who canvassed the area looking for witnesses.
MONEYMAKER:
How many people lived in the area at the time?
HUSE:
There were very few homes, probably 5 or no more than 6 residences, and Baddour's
was the last home on the narrow road. Going back in my memory 20 years now,
I'd say his house was a quarter to a third of a mile off the main road used
to get to his place, almost in a straight line due south of Alpine Blvd. That
area hasn't grown much since then, no planned residential development in there.
At that time the Baddour family themselves consisted of the doctor, his wife,
a daughter and a son. The daughter was 17 and the son was younger, maybe 13
or 14.
MONEYMAKER:
Can you describe what the terrain looks like, is it actually alpine forest,
etc.?
HUSE:
It's not a forest by any means, the elevation's no more than 2300 feet. The
road goes east and up, and in about another 20 miles it eventually climbs
to about 5000 feet.
MONEYMAKER:
Does it continue up into forested areas?
HUSE:
Yes it does and it follows the Sweetwater River it's about 10 miles. The Sweetwater
River isn't much of a flowing river. It runs about three-quarters of a mile
south of Dr. Baddour's place. Of course it always depended on rainfall, but
the river hasn't run continuously anytime in the 20 years I've been familiar
with the area. There's no snowfall at all. The terrain itself is quite steep
behind Dr. Baddour's property, going down into the (Sweetwater) river bottom
itself. It's all primarily brush and chaparral.
MONEYMAKER: Any bears in the area?
HUSE:
I don't think I've ever heard of a bear sighting in San Diego county, and
again I've been in the area almost 23 years. We have deer everywhere here
along with coyotes and fox and other types of wildlife, but no bears.
MONEYMAKER:
What else do you remember about Dr. Baddour's sightings?
HUSE:
Let's see, the first set of circumstances I remember was Dr. Baddour finding
damage to the house when he'd just moved in. He said he bought the house from
an older German couple and all of the light bulbs, inside and out, were the
yellow bug repellent type. Baddour said the German man told me that he shouldn't
change them to white, that he should get used to the yellow light
MONEYMAKER:
Because of an insect problem?
HUSE:
Baddour said the German was very evasive about that, - evasive also about
a lot of details regarding the house and property. The property did have some
acreage, I don't recall the size but it was larger than a city lot anyway.
The property had some fruit trees in the front and back yards. I don't remember
what kind of fruit trees they were, but the house and trees were surrounded
by a fence. One of Baddour's complaints was that fruit was being picked off
the trees at the tops, but not from the bottoms. The trees were upward of
7 or 8 feet high, or maybe 10 feet high. Anyway, the fruit was disappearing
from the tops of his trees and his fence was getting knocked down. He had
a wind chime at one of the doors made of brass or some kind of strong metal
which frequently rang in the blowing wind, and at one point the wind chime
suddenly turned up flattened. Baddour couldn't explain it and we couldn't
duplicate it. It was smashed. Baddour did make a plaster cast of a footprint
and I know we had photographs of it, if we didn't in fact have a plaster cast
of the print ourselves. But I do recall there was a plaster cast.
MONEYMAKER:
Do you remember the approximate size of the footprint?
HUSE:
I'm 6-foot-3 and I wear a size 12 shoe, and I'd have to say this one was larger
than my shoe and much wider than my foot. I'd say it was about 13 or 14 inches
in length, and I've been wracking my brain trying to remember if it had 4
toes or 5 toes, but I just can't recall.**
[**According to researcher, Ken Coon, who visited the Alpine area in 1971, Dr. Baddour's "Zoobies" left V -shaped, 4-toed footprints, 16 inches long and 8 inches wide with the widest measurement across the toes. The foot narrowed down to 5 inches at the heel.]
MONEYMAKER:
But there's some recollection that it might have had an usual number of toes?
HUSE:
Yes, I do seem to remember that, but I can't bring it to mind. I know the
footprint was wide overall, and less wide at the heel, but the heel was still
wider than a human foot would be.
MONEYMAKER:
Did you or any of the officers talk to the doctor's wife or kids?
HUSE:
Specifically the word came back to me, and I'm not sure which deputy found
out, but the daughter said she had a sighting in the early morning hours as
she boarded a school bus at Alpine Blvd. That would have been adjacent to
the access road leading to the Baddour house. She was getting on the bus and
spotted the creature off in the brush. There's some very thick, very tall
brush along the road there.
MONEYMAKER:
Do you remember any details of what she saw?
HUSE:
No, not really, the man who was deeply involved in this was my patrol sergeant
and he's now deceased. He was so involved with it that on his days off he'd
go up there and camp to the rear of Baddour's house. He'd take his older son
along and the two of them would camp out in hope of getting a glimpse of one
of the Zoobies. They never did. But he was the man who probably had more conversations
with the doctor than any-body else. Another sighting involved three Zoobies
sighted by a whole family. The Baddours had made it a habit to never go out
after dark, but one night they were out with the son to call in their pet
dog. In the dark the boy thought he saw the dog near a comer of the house
and called out to It. Well, the dog came running back, but from a different
corner, and what at first they thought was the dog turned out to be the smaller
Zoobie. Apparently it had been laying down and it got up and stood and walked
the opposite way, joining the other two, the larger male and female, and they
all walked off into the brush.
MONEYMAKER:
Did they ever use words like "ape" or "gorilla" to describe
the creatures?
HUSE:
No, they never did. Baddour was firm in his own mind that it wasn't an ape
or gorilla. It was something totally different than one of those. Well, for
lack of anything better we thought it to be more like the California Bigfoot,
based on how it was described. Whether it was black or brown I really can't
remember.
MONEYMAKER:
Did Dr. Baddour ever use the word Bigfoot or Sasquatch to describe the Zoobie?
HUSE:
Not to me, no. As a matter of fact we were assigned to make periodic checks
of his residence throughout the night because most of the damage to his property
was done during the night time, so my partner and I in a two-man car would
drive up there and shine the spotlight around his house. Dr. Baddour was very
convincing. I can still picture him coming outdoors one night dressed in his
skivvies and wearing black high top military boots. That was it, a tee-shirt
and shorts with those black boots and carrying that big 44 magnum.
MONEYMAKER:
How would you characterize the family, it sounds as though they were all educated,
credible people?
HUSE:
Yes, I'd characterize them as exactly that. I got the impression the daughter
was very intelligent, and of course Baddour himself was a medical doctor,
a psychiatrist.
MONEYMAKER:
In our earlier phone call to arrange this interview you mentioned something
about the creatures, -the Zoobies, mimicking human speech ... ?
HUSE:
Yes, one of the lighter stories I recall happened when the doctor got home
after dark one night. They had chickens there, and earlier he'd called his
wife to say he was going to be late and to remind her to feed the chickens
before night fall, which she did. When the doctor got home he had to exit
his car, open the gate, drove through and stopped, then got out of the car
again to close the gate behind him. He said that when he went to close the
gate that night he heard a very low, very guttural voice say, 'Here chicky,
chicky, chicky...'
MONEYMAKER:
That's funny and not unprecedented in the research. Are you saying the impression
was that one of the creature's was imitating the doctors wife who'd called
in the chickens earlier?
HUSE:
Exactly. It was the doctor's opinion, and we had no reason to doubt him, that
the Zoobie had some type of intelligence and the capability of producing sounds
like that.
MONEYMAKER:
Did they ever describe any other sounds or smells, - anything like that?
HUSE:
Smells, yes. A very pungent odor, maybe like rotting garbage. You know, he
did tell us he'd set up cameras around the house with trip-wires, but he wasn't
able to get any photographs, at least not while I was working the area. I
really can't recall but I know the doctor himself had a close sighting of
one of the Zoobies, and there were probably other sightings, but I can't remember
now. Of course I worked up there for just those two years, until April of
1972. After that I went to fly helicopters. So I was completely out of touch
with what was happening in Alpine, and I didn't get back there until 1981.
At that time I was stationed east of the Baddour home, and I didn't hear anything
more. I did hear something about the Proctor Valley Monster when I started
patrol in 1970, which if true I'd have to assume was on the order of what
Dr. Baddour was describing. Now, a few years ago a deputy told me he saw a
dark-colored, large, upright furry creature, not a bear and not human, up
in some rocks north of Interstate 8, and possibly northwest of El Capitan
(reservoir). The deputy told me it was a good distance away. Also, I was involved
in a juvenile diversion camp (near Julian,northeast of Alpine), and a couple
of counselors from another camp came down and told us they'd see something
they couldn't identify in the mountains. After talking with them it was concluded
that what they'd seen was probably a Zoobie. Another thing we found out, during
our investigation of Dr. Baddour's sightings, was that the Viejas Indians
(reservation) just north of Interstate 8 had a legend about a giant hairy
man that was the protector of their burial grounds, and those burial grounds
were located just about 2 miles north of where Dr. Baddour lived.
Note: The 1971 Alpine
incident is described in John Green's book, Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us,
pages 311 - 312. Dr. Baddour no longer lives in Alpine. The house is now in
modest disrepair but looks much as it did over 20 years ago. The terrain's
the same - thinly populated, steep and dry and full of thicket. Throughout
the years attempts to interview Dr. Baddour by researchers not involved in
the initial investigations have failed. As recently as July of 1992 the doctor,
who currently has an active practice in San Diego, still refused to comment
at length on his family's bygone experiences, saying only that he's going
to "...tell the whole story..." in an upcoming book.
Dr. Baddour
implied that the Zoobies of Alpine altered his view of reality and, he said,
his book will "...impact mankind." Ken Coon, a former Los Angeles
police detective, spent a considerable amount of time investigating the Baddour
report.
He came away convinced the sightings were authentic.
Back to Interviews?
Back to Bigfoot Encounters Main page
Back to Newspaper & Magazine Articles
Back to Bigfoot Encounters "What's New" page