Media Article # 148
Article submitted by Richard Noll

Tuesday, January 10, 1978

Bigfoot follow-up: Expert tracker finds 8 possible prints along Willow Road

By Steve Miletich
Journal American, Bellevue, Wa

Reporters have searched for evidence of Christ, chased UFOs, fished for giant sharks and even hunted Bigfoot, all in the pursuit of the people's right to know and a chance to get out of the office.

So when the director of International Bigfoot Society called the other day, it was comforting to know precedent had been established.

Ed Kaye of Seattle, who also operates a Sasquatch museum, had read a story in The Daily Journal-American last week about the discovery of a mysterious 21-inch footprint embedded in a frozen stream near Redmond.

He was putting together a hunt. An experienced Bigfoot tracker had been enlisted.

The search began Tuesday at the spot where 27-year-old Diana Johnson of Kirkland found a clear print in the city stream while checking the water supply in her family's horse pasture Dec 31.

Located about 150 yards east of Willow Road at NE 97th Street, the track left a 1 1/2-inch impression of a right foot, 10 inches wide at the ball, with the toes progressively smaller.

BIGFOOT investigator Cliff Crook of Bothell said the location of the find fell in the middle of an area between Duvall and Woodinville with a history of Sasquatch sightings.

In the '50s and early '60s, Crook explained, eyewitnesses reported capturing glimpses of the legendary half-man, half-ape in the area. Dogs were found mutilated.

And every year since 1970, there has been at least on discovery of footprints and other circumstantial evidence, he said.

Crook has been on the trail of Bigfoot for 22 years, ever since he saw something in the woods near his home in Kirkland Lake that looked like the creature.

He learned to identify bear, deer, and beaver tracks while growing up in the rural area in the 1940s - and to distinguish them from the large, unexplained tracks periodically found in the United States and Canada.

Crook had made plaster casts of prints and collected hair samples and animal droppings linked to Bigfoot.

WITHIN a half-hour Tuesday, he found a left footprint in a patch of ice several hundred yards from the other track. He soon located another possible but less-clear track nearby.

By the time he had finished a search of pastures on both sides of Willow Road, Crook had located a total of eight similar ice formations resembling footprints.

All measured 21 inches long, about 10 inches at the ball.

"Nothing is real clear," he said, "but it's possible they were made by Bigfoot."

"It's just curious that they all were 21 inches."

Crook said the tracks were larger than the average 16 to 18 inch print.

Kaye said no one, including himself, will believe there is Bigfoot until "one of the creatures is brought in, and you can pull its hair and poke it."

The best evidence to date, he said, is 30 feet of film shot at Bluff Creek in northern California in 1967 by amateur photographer Roger Patterson.

Patterson's movie showed a hairy beast, standing upright, disappearing into woods after turning and looking at the camera.

"It's the only film that hasn't been proved to be a fake," Kaye said.

HE SAID serious Bigfoot researchers approach all evidence with skepticism.

"It's the only way," Kaye said. "People fake evidence and try to make money."

"We try to prove everything false, and if we can't, it becomes possible evidence."

Kaye has been a Bigfoot buff for 20 years. He said witnesses report the Sasquatch walks on two feet, swinging his arms to the side, unlike a bear, which holds its paws in front.

When a woman who lives in a trailer in the area said she had lived in terror for a week, Kaye assured her a Sasquatch would not likely harm her.

The woman said six unopened cans of pet food disappeared from her storage shed a week before Johnson found the track.

Kaye and Crook said that was interesting.

Anybody missing a can opener?

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