There are a number of reasons why the dog tissue didn't become public knowledge, some of which I've mentioned before. According to the correspondence which I read, the reason why Hansen came clean with Sanderson was because the FBI had determined that the thing was a fake and Sanderson and everyone else by that time in the correspondence circle knew that that had happened.

So suppose that when Napier's last news release came out the Press had asked, about the dog tissue: "Gee, how did you guys find out about that?" Napier: "Well, Hansen admitted it." The press: "But gosh, why would he do that? Who'd he admit it to, and why? I mean, he's still telling us and everybody else that that thing in the glass is real. Why tell you different? Are you sure that he admitted it? How can we check up on that? Can you back that up some way? I mean that dog tissue stuff is pretty weird. Yuck! What will Hanson say if we ask him about it?" (And then the weird dog tissue involvement would have been picked up by the equivalent of today's tabloids.) Here's what Napier couldn't say: "Well what happened is that we asked the FBI to look into this whole business and they did and determined for absolute sure that the thing was a fake and then they let us know about it and since we all then knew, Hansen told Sanderson how the thing was made, including with the dog tissue and then Sanderson sent me a letter about that and then...." And, by these words, Napier and Ripley and the Smithsonian would have acquired the most dangerous enemy that one could have possibly acquired in all DC, and his office was just across the street.

No, far easier to say that they contacted Hoover and that he said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn't really ever engage in investigations, national or otherwise (although we guess that you could at least call it a bureau), in spite of its name--oh no, that's out of their jurisdiction they say. They just sit around on their fat asses all day and let you carry out the investigation yourself and if you can prove that a crime has been committed, why THEN they'll go out and make the arrest [paraphrased].

Or so, basically, (but in less detail) Napier said Hoover told him. Hoover would have never said anything as stupid as what Napier said he basically had said. It may also be that some sort of agreement was reached between the Smithsonian and Hansen, allowing him to carry on with his perfectly legal and innocuous carny business with the Iceman, without the Smithsonian coming down too hard on him in the final press release. After all, you'd hafta sorta kinda feel sorry for the guy after the Smithsonian had given him so much grief.

When Napier said that Sanderson had told him how the Iceman "might" have been constructed, he was, of course, simply referring to Sanderson's having told him, in that letter, how Hansen had told Sanderson exactly how it could and had been done. Ain't it interesting how Sanderson, as far as we know, never breathed a word to anyone else, or in any of his later writings about "how it could be done." (Or did he really put out that nonsense that you'd need to put a chimp skin over a human skeleton? If he did, he was presumably making that up to emphasize to his public how terribly difficult it would supposedly be to make a fake that could have fooled him. Napier never would have bought such nonsense.) And did the revelation how the Iceman "could have been created" supposedly come to Sanderson, at the very last moment of the investigation, in a dream or a vision, or what?

Now I have no particular reason to think that that phone call that supposedly came in and spilled the beans didn't take place and possibly Heuvelmans believed that that was the whole story, because that may be all that he was told. If I had been the Smithsonian and/or FBI, though, I would have required some notarized documents and maybe a lot more than that, not just the word of a guy on the phone. As I think I saw suggested by someone else up above, it could have just been a crony of Hansen's calling to get the investigators off the track. This is something that had occurred to me too.

I can't find any post about a crony of Hansen's calling. Maybe you can find it. This is what I posted:

"This 'spontaneous' revelation [about the wax museum employee] was perfectly timed to confirm Hansen’s latest declarations. Not that there was much cause for such a fuss; it merely confirmed what was already known, namely that a copy of the specimen had been fabricated earlier so that it could replace the original 'in case there were to be problems.'

"When Napier called Sanderson about it, the latter merely shrugged and declared that the wax museum’s call was clearly a ploy aiming at discouraging the Smithsonian’s interest in the matter. Sanderson also claimed that he had found another professional model-maker who had crafted a similar model, again for Hansen, but in April 1969. In any case, the specimen that he and his friend Bernard had carefully examined was certainly not made out of rubber because it was rotting away with a noxious smell. Furthermore, added Sanderson, even if that specimen had been a fake, which it couldn’t be for a variety of other reasons, it would necessarily have been constructed from parts taken from living beings. And he went on to explain, in that tone of his that bore no contradiction, how he would have proceeded to make such a fake using the hide of a very clear-skinned chimpanzee, spread over a human skeleton after some modifications to the hands and feet using a glove-spreader."

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

No mention of starting out with dog tissue. The fact remains Sanderson did not so much as mention dog tissue in a footnote, as far as I know."

I never said that the FBI didn't examine the Iceman. I've said more than once that I never read anything either way as to whether they did or did not. There were no details in the correspondence as to what the FBI was up to and Hoover never said in that correspondence whether the FBI was or was not actively conducting an investigation. Nor did he ever affirm that nonsense that the FBI has no jurisdiction in any case until somebody else can prove that a crime has been committed.

However, Hoover was carrying on correspondence up until the end. He didn't just rebuff Napier at the beginning like Napier indicated. What I have also said more than once is that it would have been possible, by means of their accessing records, for the FBI to show that the iceman was a fake and that the mysterious owner didn't exist, without their actually exmining the Iceman. If I had been an FBI agent, though, I would have examined the Iceman, and they very well might have. If what was in the ice had exactly the same hair and other details as in the pictures that Heuvelmans and Sanderson photographed and it was a model, that would show that the item that Heuvelmans and Sanderson examined was the same model.

The only way that I know about the FBI operations is what I saw in Sanderson's letter and that the other correspondents reacted to that letter as if they knew about this already, and that Hansen first complained about being bugged by the FBI but then later used that claim to promote the Iceman. (Just a coincidence?) Napier's lie about Hoover's lack of interest and the reason for it also jibe with all this. I get tired of having to repeat the same stuff over and over because you act like you've never heard it before. You can believe or disbelieve what I say but don't act like i've never said it. In due course, I will provide information from the surviving correspondence, that provides some circumstantial evidence for what I've been saying.

I think this is an example of the legacy hoaxers crave. Just saying...

You don't have to say anything over and over because I can go back and read your posts. I've done that. I just question whether the FBI could have determined it was a fake without an examination. What seems certain is that they did not confiscate the exhibit. I also question whether Hansen's claim of using dog tissue had any validity. I think if Sanderson had taken it seriously he might have written more about it, at least to Heuvelmans.

The hair is interesting and I've been meaning to bring that up. Not only is the flow different, the hair on the thing S&H examined and photographed was described as fine. The hair on the model in Austin is coarse. There were other differences. I'm looking for ajciani's post on this and other differences on BFF. He's a doctor.

In the meantime I found this in one of my posts there in 2011: "According to Hansen, what does not appear in either scientist's report is just how they became convinced the Iceman was real. To get the best possible view of it they had hung bright lights over the glass under which it lay, and while Hansen was away from them for a moment one of them placed one of the hot lights directly on the ice cold glass. It shattered, and a pungent odor like that of rotting flesh rose from the ice. This convinced them that an actual corpse, freshly killed, lay before them. Hansen will never forget what the distinguished scientists said when he reminded them of their promise not to publicize the story at that point. 'We are scientists first,' they told him, 'and gentlemen second.' (He doesn't say exactly which one of them said this.)" (p.144).

Ivan Sanderson, in his report, refers to this important incident in this way: "The corpse or whatever it is, is rotting. This could be detected by a strong stench -- typical of rotting mammalian flesh - exuding from one of the corners of the insulation of the coffin. Whatever this corpse may be, it would seem to include flesh of some kind" (Genus, p.253).

The link doesn't work any more but p.144 might be one source for the broken glass/rotting odor idea. <getting back to the original question>

Well, which is it? The (dramatically) shattered glass, or the leaky corner of the insulation? Fact is, Ivan and Bernard didn't really examine the dummy, either; not to the standards of real science, anyway.

What you have labeled "real" and "fake" actually look pretty darn similar, and rather different from the known, thawed mannequin.

 

I think you might need to reinspect the label of "fake". Heuvelmans told Coleman that what he photographed in 1969 was not the original, based on some changes in the ice and positioning of the mouth, but Coleman wondered if Heuvelmans might have been too quick in that assessment, and Roche later told Coleman that what he had seen in 1969 might have actually been the original, based on the feet and toes.

There were apparently some known differences between the versions of the iceman, especially it seems, the feet and the face.

 

The feet on the known mannequin are different from the feet in the Heuvelmans photos. The Heuvelmans left foot is pointed down and forward, with the left knee bent, and lower leg angled toward the outside; kind of like a kicker about to kick a football. The known mannequin has the lower left leg coming parallel with the right leg, and the left foot pointed down and rotated toward the outside. The hairiness of the feet and toes is different too. The known mannequin has sparse hair, while the photos look to be quite a bit more hairy.

 

There also appear to be differences in the hand. First, the two different sketches show the fingers of the left arm in two different positions. I think the one may just be a lower quality sketch, but between the known mannequin and the photos, the left hand has changed positions. From the orientation in the photos, it appears the left thumb is very near the right eye. If the mannequin were photographed from the same orientation as the Heuvelmans and Coleman photos, I think the left hand would be clear of the face. There also look to be differences in the positioning of the thumb relative to the other fingers.

 

The known mannequin and the Heuvelmans and Coleman photos are close, very close, but there are also a lot of little (and not so little) differences. If Hansen had the mannequin made to resemble the body, and then altered the body a little to better match the mannequin, only a close-up inspection would have been able to tell. Not only that, but he could have altered the mannequin between 1967 and 2002, changing the face or left leg, for examples. Without having any close-up, macro photos of the original and similar photos of the mannequin, all we are left with is a literally cloudy mystery.

 

As to mold; yes, it can grow on vinyl, especially soft or old vinyl. There are even some molds which can grow under ice (they rot golf courses). The problem I see with the mold is that it is only on the face. That mannequin should have had mold growing all over, not just on the face. The water would have spread it. I also think the face would have been something Hansen would have cleaned up.

Ah. I found ajciani's post:

Go with the firsthand accounts, Steven Streufert. The cracked glass was on the same end and it seems the two accounts/events were conflated by later writers.

Perhaps, but I still think the firsthand people were full of shite, one way or the other. It's all a bit tall tale, with a pretense toward science. Really, I'm reading the Heuvelmans book, and it's hilarious how he continuously veers away from factuality into fantasy and assumption and speculation.

Ron Pine: I don't know which post of mine you're referring to about the call from the director of the wax museum but it's from Heuvelmans' book. If it wasn't in quotes then it is now:

"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.

As to the rest are you asking me to speculate?

 

I wonder if there would have been much interest if Hansen had been exhibiting another dead mammal "discovered" in the Mekong Delta after the war. Is there only flap about possible hominoids running around alive? Our evolution is like that of other mammals; are we somehow unique because we're a bipedal primate?

Ron Pine I found my post about the director of the wax museum's call. It's the second reply under your post beginning: "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 is in quotes and sourced.

I'm pretty sure that Sanderson and/or Huvelmans wrote that the hair was coarse. Maybe it was in Sanderson's Argosy article.

"There is no sign of true axillary hair such as that of humans. Further, neither of us could find any evidence of pubic hair either, though there is undoubtedly fairly thick, fine hair all over the pubic region. This absence of these types of hair is typically Pongid; even simioid. Apart from the sparse bristles on the brow ridges mentioned above and the curious stubbly line up the front of the septum between the nares, the face is naked. However, there appears to be hair above the brow, and flowing backwards on the side of the head. (No ears are visible as the head is thrown back into opaque ice.) Under the chin there is a dense forward-pointing mass of short hairs filling in the inch to two-inch ‘neck’, between the immense arched clavicular torso top and the wide chin. The most striking features of the trichology of the torso are twofold. First, there is a sort of fringe of what is obviously a long-haired cape covering the dorsum which just emerges around the sides of the torso and forms a sort of continuous in-curved eaves (as on a house). The rest of the chest is almost naked but for widely scattered long, lank, straight hairs. These are concentrated as shown in the drawing down the midline of the sternum, being slightly parted in the median line and then flowing on downwards into the sparse pelage of the belly region. The contrast between the ‘eaves’ of the back cape and this sparsely-haired chest and front is very striking and is, it should be noted, completely in accord with Pongid trichological arrangement rather than with that of hominids." - Ivan Sanderson

Jevning, William. The Minnesota Iceman (Kindle Locations 433-445). Kindle Edition.

The only fine hair mentioned in this quote is that in the pubic region. Nothing is said about the fineness or the coarseness of the hair over the other 99% of the body, except for the bristles (meaning thick and stiff) on the brow. I'll probably be able to find the quote I'm thinking of, but not tonight. I'm pretty sure that it was either Sanderson or Heuvelmans, somewhere.

 

Lu Ann Lewellen: I didn't say that the supposed phone call from the supposed fabricator of the Iceman was your creation. I just brought it up again because it has been proposed to be or said to be the sole or primary reason for the Smithsonian's "dropping the ball," and I was writing about why the ball was dropped. My contention, of course, is that whether or not that call took place, and it very well might have, the primary reason for the ball's being dropped was the FBI's findings.

Somebody up above, I think, and I never remembered it as being you, mentioned that the investigators should have checked to make sure that the person who called, if someone actually did call, was on the level and not just some buddy of Hansen's or somebody Hansen had paid to make the call, so as to throw the invesigators off of the track, so that they wouldn't discover some crime associated with the acquisition of an actual Iceman. This idea had also previously occurred to me as well. Maybe I'm thinking of something that was written in a related, contemporaneus thread with this one. So much has been written by this time, both de novo and in quotations, that it's hard to keep track of.

"The legs from the uppermost point visible on the thighs to the bottom of the shanks, where they disappear below opaque ice, are well-haired. These hairs are perfectly straight, on an average over two inches long, widely separated— their follicles being well over an eighth of an inch apart— and all how straight downward. Finally, the tops of the feet are very heavily haired, and right down to the ends of the terminal joints of the digits. These hairs look wiry, are fairly widely spaced, and curve gently over the feet in all directions.

The Hairs. It is, of course, impossible to supply or even suggest any concrete facts about these apart from mere visual observation. From this, nonetheless, and as seen through the clearest ice covering, it would appear that they are extremely coarse or thick, average about two to three inches in length more or less all over the body, and are mostly quite straight. Those that curve have been mentioned above. An interesting fact is the very wide separation of their follicles. We tried to measure these distances but the distortion caused by the ice made it almost impossible; but we would estimate that it is on an average nearly as much as a quarter of an inch— say three to four millimeters. On the chest and upper belly they are even more widely spaced, and despite the extremely ‘hairy’ appearance of the arm, we have reason to believe that the follicles are no closer together there, the effect being due simply to the much longer length of the individual hairs. The ‘cape’, as far as it can be seen, is definitely darker and denser and appears to be jet black." - Ivan Sanderson.

He goes on about the long, straight "agouti" hairs. Heuvelmans disagreed.

Jevning, William. The Minnesota Iceman (Kindle Locations 448-459). Kindle Edition.

It appears the hair was both fine and coarse, depending on location.

 

Ron Pine: I don't remember anything about a suggestion the wax museum call was from a buddy of Hansen's. It wasn't exactly a revelation since Hansen told them right off the bat he'd had a model made.

So, the person who made the gaffe made it that way, partly like an ape and partly like a human. That was the whole point of the hoax... to create curiosity and wonder. A whole lot of talk over nothing. Yet those widely spaced follicles sure do convince even more that it was a fake.

Yes, if one is hand punching hair all over a full sized body, spreading out the spacing of the hairs would make the tedious work much shorter. Biologically, however, there should have been more hairs, spaced much closer together.

Doug Hajicek said he saw the model in Hansen's barn and noted more than one hair inserted into the same hole.