One of the most popular mysterious creatures is the Yeti or Bigfoot, as it is called in North America. If you analyze all the eyewitness reports, then in the United States there will be almost no patch of forest where it is not seen.
According to eyewitness observations, these creatures are extremely secretive and all they want from people is to be left alone. But could the yeti be involved in the mysterious disappearances of people in the forests? In this article we will look at one such case.
At first glance, everything in this story seems quite clear. An adult man who called himself a "yeti hunter" and was fond of finding these creatures, once went to the forest on a hike with a 16-year-old girl. The girl from the hike never returned home, and the man was accused of kidnapping and murdering her.
During interrogations, the man replied that the girl was kidnapped by a Bigfoot, but his words sounded like a pathetic excuse. “You just raped her and strangled her, hid her body somewhere, and then came up with the most ridiculous excuse of all suitable” - decided the society.
But maybe the man was right?
This happened on June 1, 1987, when 16-year-old Theresa Ann Bier from the city of Fresno (California) went on a hike to Mount Shyutai Peak (2.5 km height), which is 25 miles northeast of California lakes Bass. I went not alone, but with my 43-year-old friend Russell Welch.
In those years, Welch was a well-known researcher of Bigfoot in the country, the girl was also interested in this topic, and together they decided to try to look for Bigfoot and traces of its presence on Mount Shyutai Peak, in the Sierra Nevada mountains, in which mysterious hairy people had been observed many times earlier. Welch himself even claimed that he himself saw several Bigfoots in these places.
View of Shyutai Peak mountain. Therese disappeared without a trace somewhere
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It seemed strange that the teenager's parents just let Teresa out into the forest with a very adult man, but nevertheless, their trip took place. Only a few days later, only Russell Welch returned from it, and the girl disappeared without a trace and her body was never found, despite a thorough search.
When Welch began to question the police, he first said that the girl had run away from him somewhere, but then he told what sounded very strange for an outright lie.
According to Welch's story, he and the girl were looking for a Bigfoot and one day they had to walk at a distance from each other as they walked through a dense forest. And at that moment a certain large hairy creature "flew over the girl, grabbed her and disappeared without a trace with her in the thicket of the forest."
From the look and demeanor of Welch, one could say that he sincerely believed his story. But the police, of course, did not believe in him. Welch was facing charges of kidnapping and murder, but first the girl's body had to be found. To search for Teresa, the police went to the area where the girl allegedly disappeared and began to thoroughly search everything there. They found the place where Teresa and Welch were pitching the tent, but other than that, there was no sign of the girl's presence anywhere.
After that, Welch was nevertheless accused of kidnapping the child and he had only to wait for the trial. During this waiting, he was offered a deal, he was asked to take on the charge of murdering the girl if her body was ever found, and for this he will now be given only a year in prison. But Welch did not make a deal, all the while in prison he continued to believe in his version of the Bigfoot kidnapping.
Having considered all the evidence of Welch's guilt, or rather, realizing that there was simply no such evidence, the man was simply released three days before the trial. The court reserved the right to arrest him again if the girl's body is found.
Over the years, Teresa herself or the remains of her body were never found, and Welch continued to claim that Bigfoot kidnapped her. His insistence on this matter eventually made some people suspicious that he might be telling the truth. In the end, he could have settled on his first version that the girl left him (and after that she had an accident or was attacked by a bear). Why was it necessary to compose a fairy tale about the abduction of the Bigfoot?
In fact, Russell Welch could really be right. In the history of cryptozoology, there are several cases of yeti kidnapping. For example, a very famous case dated 1924, when lumberjack Albert Ostman claimed that when he was sleeping in the forest in a sleeping bag, he was grabbed and carried away by a huge hairy man. It happened near Vancouver, Canada.
Ostman tried to break free, but he failed. At dawn, Ostman found himself in a cave and realized that he was being held captive by a bigfoot family - a male, a female and two cubs. He had a gun, but he did not want to shoot, because the hairy people treated him more than friendly.
They gave him complete freedom within the valley, but he moved under the constant supervision of one of the creatures. The female sometimes treated him aggressively, but the male protected him. Looks like Albert has become the pet of the Bigfoot family.
This went on for a week. Once Ostman gave the owner of the gorge snuff, but the bigfoot male mistook it for food and ran to the river to rinse his mouth. Albert Ostman gathered all his strength and ran from the valley to civilization. He told his story about the abduction only in the seventies and many treated this story as fiction.
Also in 1928, the Indian Machilat Harry of the Canadian Nootka tribe said that he was abducted by a group of hairy creatures and dragged far into the forest before he managed to escape and return in fear for several days.
Could the same thing have happened to Teresa? If she had an accident or if Welch killed her, why weren't the remains found? On the trail it would have been easy to find a fresh grave, if he buried it, the area was thoroughly combed, including probably with dogs. Has Russell Welch passed a lie detector test? What did her parents think of their daughter's disappearance? There are a lot of incomprehensible moments in this story, but we will probably never get to the bottom of the truth now.