Teton County, Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Winter 1968

In the early winter of 1968, two young men from Marshalltown, Iowa set out by car on a hunting expedition to Wyoming.  Near Jackson Hole, they shot a coyote out of the car window and when it did not go down, they got out of the car and followed a blood trail in the snow to complete the task.  They scrambled up over a small hill beside the road and stopped dead in surprise at the sight of a large dark ape-like figure standing in the snow and facing them about 300 feet away. 
 
It looked like a gorilla to them and thinking that it must be an escaped animal, with maybe a reward on its head, one of them (they would not say which one) took aim with a scoped 30.06 and shot it in the chest. It fell over backwards in the snow and when this happened they ran up to it.

The thing was lying on its back, arms by its sides.  It was about 6.5 feet in length, heavily built, and covered with hair but with the face bare of hair. The face was very human with a short nose, wide mouth etc.  The eyelids were fluttering and the fingers were opening and closing.  Blood oozed from a hole in the chest and was gathering in the sunken hollow of the chest.  The creature made no sound.  

Horrified that they had shot a human, which they thought might have been the mutant offspring of a nearby family, maybe hidden for years but at last escaped, they turned and ran down the hill and jumped in the car and drove non-stop all the way back to Marshalltown, IA.

Seven years went by and probably mostly in fear of prosecution, they told no one of the incident.  Then one of them whispered it to his father who told his mother, …and so in 1975 it came to me.  

The two men were Marshalltown residents, Lyle Bingaman and Mike Burton. I contacted them and promised them confidentiality and then submitted detailed questionnaires, which they completed and returned to me.  I then asked if they would come to Jackson Hole and meet me and take me to where they had the incident.  Burton said, “no.”  But Bingaman agreed and so I sent him an air ticket and a little later he met me in Jackson Hole. Then took me to where he believed the place was.  However, having been there during the brief time of the incident for only a few minutes, and as it was now seven years later, (and in the summer, without snow) He was unable to verify the actual place.  He said that it was on a ridge running down to the road at an angle, somewhere south of Jackson Hole.  However as I found out later, (when I went back and did an extensive search) there are several similar ridges in this area, any one of which could have been the actual ridge where the incident took place.

Bingaman, who I remember as a pleasant and credible young man, left and went back to Marshalltown but a little later returned to Jackson Hole and then move to Lander Wyoming where he became a school teacher.  We kept in touch for a while and then lost contact.

Yesterday I tracked Bingaman down via Google and called him and talked to him.  The Lyle Bingaman I talked too yesterday lives in Lander and was formerly from Marshalltown and had recently retired from school teaching and when questioned vaguely knew of the incident.  But he adamantly denied ever having been part of it, said it was all a story made up by Burton, said he had never met me, had never filled in or signed a questionnaire and had never been flown by me to Jackson Hole.

The above notes, to the best of my memory, are from the original questionnaires and from conversations with Bingaman in Jackson Hole.  Burton's whereabouts are unknown to me.

Peter C. Byrne

Blake Eckard also investigated this same report. In early April, 2009, Eckard wrote: "I too, tracked down and talked, for over 2 hours, to Lyle Bingaman about the alledged shooting in Wyoming.  He told me it was all a hoax.  Peter would have none of it.  Lyle denied having ever been flown to Jackson Hole by Byrne...instead saying Peter had just showed up on his doorstep after he moved to Lander and camped out in his yard.  This and several other things felt totally wrong." ....Blake April 2009

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