Lu Ann Lewellen: I suspect that you would take Heuvelmans's word over mine if I tried to tell you that I knew more about what went on in Minnesota when Heuvelmans was there, than Heuvelmans knew, even though I had been in Washington, D. C. at the time. But you take Heuvelmans's word over mine about what what was going on in Washington, D. C., when I was in Washington D. C., and Heuvelmans was presumably in Europe. (I'll take your word for it that he was in Guatemala.) I'll just have to read Heuvelmans's book (possibly for the second time) so that I can really find out what actually was in those letters I was reading.

 

If Sanderson and Napier and Ripley had been told by Hoover to not reveal the FBI's involvement in the Iceman matter, then I somewhat doubt that Napier and/or Sanderson would have let Heuvelmans know all about it. And in the past you've expressed dusdain for what you regarded as second or third hand stories by people who are liars or exaggerators. So here we have a gullible person telling us what an exaggerator said was told to him by a liar (the last two characterizations are yours).

Disdain? I was distilling some of the vitriol expressed by skeptical BFF and JREF/ISF message boarders re Ivan T. Sanderson. Heuvelmans escaped that kind of attack, mostly.

I'm using Heuvelmans' book because it's his first hand account. Caption on the photo of him in Guatemala:

"Thinking that he had left the situation with the Iceman in good hands since the Smithsonian had taken charge of the affair and the FBI was inquiring as to its origin, Heuvelmans left the United States somewhat lighthearted, to embed himself, as he had planned, into the jungles of Guatemala. It’s only when he returned to France that he learned that American officials had dropped the ball."

Heuvelmans, Bernard. NEANDERTHAL: The Strange Saga of the Minnesota Iceman. Anomalist Books. Kindle Edition.

 

Oh, and please stop making it personal. That last remark would have earned you a report to the admins in an unrelated FB group I'm in.

You've stated you don't believe these hominoids exist anywhere in the world, if I recall correctly. Of course you have to believe the MIM was nothing but a model. I'm impressed by stories out of Nam and Helmut Loofs-Wissowa's article on it. I don't find it impossible one was shot in SE Asia during the war and transported somehow to the States where it was on display at county fairs and the like. There was a model too, indisputably, but the original could have been the real deal. And no, I don't think it was a bigfoot.

Lu Ann Lewellen: Your remark about how I made a remark that could earn me a report to admins in certain groups is, I think, based on a misunderstanding. As it happens, I try to be quite scrupulous when it comes to not getting "personal," especially when it comes to labelling someone, although I will, on occasion, use sarcasm, as I think it would be safe to say that you do as well.

 

I'm assuming that you thought that I was labelling you as a gullible person, or an exaggerator, or a liar. The person who I was calling a gullible person was Heuvelmans, the exaggerator was Sanderson, and the liar was Hansen. When I said that the last two characterizations were by you, I was referring to the fact that you have labelled Sanderson as being an exaggerator and Hansen as being a liar, when I was writing about things that they have said or someone has said that they had said and that I based an argument on it. The characterization of Heuvelmans as a gullible person was mine alone, so I was indicating that I was not attributing it to you.

 

Reread what I wrote again. The context has to do with my having been criticized by you for my arguing on the basis of second or third accounts from unrelable people, and my pointing out that you do the same thing--telling us what Heuvelmans said that Sanderson said that Hansen said--a third person chain featuring unreliable people, as if it should be regarded as solid evidence of anything.

I did think you were calling me gullible and I assume you think I am. Of course I don't think Heuvelmans was gullible so there's my confirmation bias at work again. Mea culpa.

All that aside, Hansen said many things and some of them may have been true, but without some evidence of dog tissue on the model whatever he told Sanderson may have been just another lie.

We know he had a model and if the FBI or local law or any other authorized agent had shown up he'd had time to add rotting tissue to his display. It's not paranoia when they're really after you.

This is the part of Loofs-Wissowa's article I remember:

"In order to ascertain the physical identity of the apeman we were looking for and of which/whom we only had very rudimentary information (about 1.80m.tall, dark brown to black fur with a reddish tinge, powerfully built with hardly any neck, hands going down to the knees), I had prepared a series of twelve pictures to choose from, to be submitted to anybody who had seen or heard of these creatures. They included photographs as well as drawings of the three great apes (gorilla, chimpanzee and orangutan) and reconstitution drawings of various prehistoric men, fromHomo habilis to Homo erectus and beyond, including Alika Lindbergh's drawing of the living Homo pongoides. Upon showing these pictures to those who had assembled around us, asked to identify the feared Briau, everybody pointed to this latter drawing without hesitation after having carefully examined all the pictures spread out in front of them."

"We know he had a model"? Which was... the original, to begin with?

Or not. I like the Chinese dealer story. Not as exciting as the Russian trawler story, I know, but more likely to be true, in my opinion.

None of the stories are likely to be true.

Lu Ann Lewellen: Maybe you've said something in depth about this before but, if so, I don't recall it. Here we supposedly have Napier and others all really worked up and getting ready to get the Federal Government to seize the Iceman, using some sort of eminent domain or preserving the Nation's sacred partrimony or something--man they're hot to trot-- and then for some strange reason they, as worded above, suddenly "dropped the ball." Gee, that's strange!

One would think that it must have been some really powerful event that completely and suddenly turned them off. I mean they were supposedly willing to move heaven and earth to get their hands on that Iceman! I find it hard to believe that if Hansen told them "Sorry guys, the mysterious owner who for some odd reason has been having me take that thing around to side shows for yahoos to gawk at for a very few cents a pop has really gotten pissed at me for getting involved with you all and has carted off the real Iceman and has left me a model of it to get more pennies with at sideshows," that the hot-to-trot types would accept every word of this as gospel truth and say, "Well, OK, fella, sorry to have bothered you," and immediately "drop the ball."

 

But suppose an FBI investigation had proved that the "original" was a fake and that there had never been any "model replacement." How well could that explain why the ball was dropped so precipitously? That having occurred is exactly what the correspondence that I read said had happened--and there are still indications in the tiny amount of the correspondence that still exists that this is exactly what happened.

Ron Pine More likely it was the call from the director of a wax museum who had an employee who'd worked on the model and Sanderson's description of how he would have made a model. Napier concluded the model made in Hollywood and Hansen's exhibit were one and the same.

"As he wrote to me later, John Napier would have liked to be able to explain to me the reasons behind his change of heart, but I was far away [in Guatemala]."

Heuvelmans, Bernard. NEANDERTHAL: The Strange Saga of the Minnesota Iceman. Anomalist Books. Kindle Edition.

Neither the FBI nor the Smithsonian would have wanted to look ridiculous.

This discussion is interesting, so in-depth.... I‘ve looked through the original files by Heuvelmans since they‘re stored here in Switzerland... he‘s collected everything and there are countless original unpublished documents, pictures and drawings in those boxes... probably they contain also answers to these question.. when I find time I‘ll look into it again.. contact me if there are specific infos you‘re looking for, and I‘ll try to dig them out.

Lu Ann Lewellen: Where did you get the part about the supposed call from the director of the wax museum? I see that it is not in quotation marks. And why would Sanderson have written, just like it was already common knowledge among the people that he was writing to, that Hansen had stopped claiming, in dealing with them, that the Iceman was real, because the FBI investigation had determined that it wasn't? And why would Hansen (just coincidentally?) complain, on at least one occasion having nothing to do with his conversation with Sanderson, that the FBI had been bugging him?

 

And why would Napier lie, in at least one of his books, that when Hoover was contacted, Hoover had said then and there that the FBI had no interest in the affair and that that was the end of it, when I read the correspondence between Hoover and the others, over a considerable period of time, and it was clear that Hoover was indeed interested? And why would Napier give that ridiculous explantion for why the FBI couldn't get involved? Hoover could get involved in anything he damn well pleased.

 

And why is it that the very, very few, of the documents that I read and that have survived are ones having no mention of Hoover and the FBI, and no letters from Hoover? And how could Sanderson have gotten by with having made up a lie about what the FBI had been doing and sold it to the others in the written conversation that I read, who were Napier, Ripley...and Hoover? And would he have have been crazy enough to try to do that?

Ron Pine: maybe this was mentioned somewhere in one of the posts... but when and how exactly did Hansen confess to Sanderson that the Iceman was just a fake?

If the FBI ceased involvement without examining the IceIceBigfoot, and it was this alleged paper trail that Ron proposed that had proven a model was made, that only proves A model was made, which we already know

because that's what is sitting in Austin. But, without that paperwork, it's still only conjecture and hearsay that there was indeed 2 bodies...or 1. And I've gone crosseyed.

Christoph Kummer: I'm not quite sure of the specifics you're asking for. Toward the end of the correspondence that I read, I read a letter by Sanderson, noting that Hansen was now coming clean to him about what the deal was with the Iceman, because, after all, the FBI had determined that what Sanderson and Heuvelmans had looked at was a fake and that the odor was owing to decaying dog tissue. What Hanson is quoted as saying, by Sanderson, was not exactly a "confession," acording to my understanding of things, because the FBI had determined that the Iceman was a fake and this was presumably already known to all of the participants in the back-and-forth letter writing group.

It's interesting that you have those records of Heuvelmans's. I have recently come into possession of about 160 pages of documents, presumably representing all of Sanderson's personal files on the Iceman. I have not had time to read all of it yet and have merely given it a very quick scan. A lot of it appears to be drafts of articles that Sanderson was to have published, which would probably be not too helpful, but there is other stuff in there that is hand-written and that might be quite useful.

I've gathered that in the parties involved... Napier, Hansen, Sanderson, Heuvelmans, and Hoover... Ron feels that these individuals are either dishonest, unqualified, or secretive (or a combo of more than one). So whose correspondence/accounting is more reliable and therefore more "true "? Sounds like a crapshoot. Guess it depends on the side of the fence you're on.

I did not know any of them personally. So really, their personalities and predilections are subjective opinions of others. Human foibles filtered through other human foibles.

Travis J Hill Cartoonist: Read again how I laid out one way in which the FBI could have determined that the Iceman was a fake without actually examining it.

I don't "feel" like anything. I am relying on evidence that I saw with my own eyes and other evidence present in the written word available to anyone.

Apologies. So if they all ARE INDEED either dishonest, unqualified, or secretive (or a combo of more than one), whose correspondence/accounting is more reliable and therefore more "true "?

OK... maybe we can share documents/sources sometime... I can't recall all the details and how things unfolded, because some years have past since I looked into it. The details of the Smithsonian's involvement are interesting to me.

Lu Ann Lewellen: I am in possession of a memo from Napier to Ripley, consisting of the draft of a proposed press release to the general public. It announces the cessation of the Smithsonian's interest in the Iceman. I don't know if it was accepted verbatim by Ripley and issued to the public word for word or not. At any rate, it states, flat out, for the public's consumption, that the reason that the Smithsonian was dropping the issue was to remain a secret. If it was a secret, where did you get your information that the Smithsonian dropped its interest merely on the basis of supposed information provided by someone supposedly involved in the construction of a model? Although the Smithsonian didn't reveal the source of its information, the way it described the nature of that information, and its reliability, seems to go beyond what it could have gotten out of a supposed fabricator.

Ron Pine: If you'd read the book you would know that. Do I have to C&P the whole thing for you? I'm probably violating copyright. Can you just buy it or get it from a library, please?

Here's the Smithsonian's statement:

"The Smithsonian Institution is no longer interested in what has been called the Minnesota Iceman because it is convinced that this creature is nothing but a fairground fabrication made of foam rubber and hair. A reliable source, which the Smithsonian is not authorized to reveal, has provided information regarding the owner of the model as well as to the date and place of its fabrication. This information, together with some recent suggestions by Ivan T. Sanderson, the scientific writer and original discoverer of the iceman, on how to construct such a creature have convinced us beyond reasonable doubt that the 'original' model and the alleged current “substitute” are one and the same.

"The director of the Primate Biology Program of the Smithsonian, Dr. John Napier, points out that this institution has always maintained an attitude of skepticism combined with an open mind, and that its only interest in this affair is to discover the truth, which it is reasonably certain is as stated above."

The reliable source would be the director of the wax museum already mentioned.

 

"At the beginning of May, George Berklacy, public-relations man for the Smithsonian, received a phone call from the director of a wax museum in California. That gentleman told him that one of his employees, whose name he could unfortunately not reveal, had collaborated in April 1967 in the fabrication of an ape-man in foam rubber for Frank D. Hansen. It was his employee who had inserted the hair of a bear into it."

Heuvelmans, Bernard. NEANDERTHAL: The Strange Saga of the Minnesota Iceman. Anomalist Books. Kindle Edition.

Why couldn't they say "We've determined it was a hoax and want no part of it"?

Travis J Hill Cartoonist: The Smithsonian did indeed end up saying that the Iceman was a hoax and wanted no part of it.

 

Lu Ann Lewellen: If I have correctly interpreted what I've read in your comments, Heuvelmans appears to have written that he was forever denied information from Napier, as to why the Smithsonian "dropped the ball," because he (Heuvelmans) had been, at the time of the "ball dropping," in Guatemala. Assuming that at that time communication was difficult between Napier and Heuvelmans when Napier was in Guatemala, how did that keep Napier from ever telling Heuvelmans what the deal had been, if Napier had ever been willing to do so, after Heuvelmans had returned to Europe?

Ron Pine: "Was it a sudden impulse of decency or of scientific probity that led John Napier, immediately after the publication of the Smithsonian’s press release, to inform some journalists that, personally, he remained keenly interested in the frozen man and eager to examine it. He added: 'It is difficult to believe that Dr. Heuvelmans would have been so easily fooled.'”

...

"Having finally returned to France from Guatemala, I wrote to Napier on May 29 to protest his disastrous initiative, which I saw as 'a desertion before the assault,' a rout provoked by the first sign of a reply from our detractors. As a vindication, as much for the eyes of S. Dillon Ripley, general secretary of the Smithsonian, as for Ivan and myself, Napier sent each one of us a memorandum in which he explained all the elements on which he based his doubts."

...

"I may be a complete idiot, but I don’t understand how one can come to the conclusion that a specimen is a fake by combining the fact that there exists a rubber model with the fact that it is only possible to make one by stretching the skin of a chimpanzee over a human skeleton. One should chose between these two contradictory possibilities: a blown-up dummy studded with monkey hair, or a modified ape....."

Heuvelmans, Bernard. NEANDERTHAL: The Strange Saga of the Minnesota Iceman. Anomalist Books. Kindle Edition.