All language subtitles for Sasquatch.S01E02.1080p.WEB.H264-BIGDOC

If I could get it off here.

There you go.

This is what people
claim they saw,

you know, when
they see a Bigfoot.

Gimlin and Roger asked me
if I'd wear the suit, you know,

and promised me to give me
a thousand bucks, you know,

for 10 minutes
work. What the heck?

That's kinda the
way that we got,

you know, mixed up
in the Bigfoot thing.

But they said you can't
tell anybody anything.

Nothing. No. Nothing.

I said, "Okay, I won't."

So, for 35 years, I
kept it, you know.

I denied it that was me,

and I denied it, you
know, all those years.

"Well, we know it was you."

"No, you know,
you're full of beans."

I put my legs in

and then I put my arms
in and then I stood up,

and they zipped it up, and
then the head went on last.

I walked across there
and it only took one shot

of me going across there.

It was hot, you know. I
was afraid of getting shot,

by, you know, a hunter or
something out there with a rifle.

For people to say, "Well, it had
to be somebody in a suit" and stuff,

I said, "That just... ".

I could tell if there
was somebody in a suit.

There was no such thing.

I could just see
everything moving

underneath the hair
and the muscle and.

"Have him look at my right hip."

I had my jeans on.
It was my wallet.

He knows it was me.

Bob Heironimus is
not a very big guy.

He probably only stands
about five-foot-nine or -ten.

Come to find out,
well, you know,

in the last, years,

he just lives down the
road from me a ways.

He's my neighbor, but,
um, I still wave at him

when I go by and.

He won't speak to me or...

Or he drives by, he
won't look at me and...

What?

Yeah, he has waved a few
times, but he won't look this way.

The film footage
actually speaks for itself.

Not knowing
sometimes does create

a doubt if there
is such a thing.

If somebody comes
up to me and says,

"Well, that was fake,"
I'll just say, "Well,

so be it."

You know?

"If you can prove
it, then prove it."

I'd been chasing this
crazy fucking story

I heard in the fall of 1993

about a Sasquatch

tearing three guys
apart on a cannabis farm

in Mendocino County.

And after weeks of
trying, finally got a hit

on somebody that
had heard the story.

This guy Razor, he keyed in
on, "Yeah, that rings a bell."

And he had two critical
pieces of new information.

One was the three guys
that were killed were Mexicans

and two,

that the location was not
only Mendocino County

but specifically Spy Rock Road.

Now, private
investigator that I hired

kinda disappeared
for a couple weeks,

and then he just came
across with this text

that was like, A,
saying that he quit

and B, like,

you are venturing into dangerous
territory with this investigation.

He won't return my phone
calls. He won't return my texts.

He won't answer my emails.

Like, nothing.

Hello.

Hey, man, this is
David Holthouse.

I don't know what your
schedule's looking like

next few weeks, you know, a
month out, something like that

but if, is there anyway we
could knock around a bit

together up in Mendo?

Yeah. Yeah.

The next step is to find out

what was going on with
Mexicans working on dope farms

in Mendocino County.

What kind of shit was going on at
Spy Rock Road in the early '90s?

You look at local news
coverage going back decades,

you know, stabbing on Spy
Rock, shooting on Spy Rock,

murder on Spy Rock.

Spy Rock. Spy Rock. Spy Rock.

Tell me about Spy Rock Road

and what makes it different

than other areas in
Humboldt or Mendocino.

Well, it's a... I mean,
back then especially,

you're pretty cut off, you know.

So you go up there and
make a commitment to grow,

you're not gonna be coming down

every couple of days
to get something.

You go up the
mountain a little ways

and it's the Hells Angels
controls that part of the mountain.

So it's a rough and
tumble mountain.

It's a mountain where
there's always been rumors

that why everyone else was
getting robbed and home invasions,

it didn't go on up there.

Because it was protected
in a way by the locals.

It was one of those areas
where there was a potential

for a heightened
amount of violence.

It wasn't the first time I heard
someone got killed up there.

It's not that hard
to grow cannabis.

But to... finish it

and to protect it
while it's growing

that starts to add elements

of, danger and skill

that are necessary
to, like, pull it off.

I mean, you had
to control your farm,

you had to control your area.

You know? If you can't instill
respect from your neighbor,

you... then you gotta
instill fear in them.

Early '90s, it's like
full-on militarization

of the war on drugs, right?

Was it like being occupied by...

Yeah, I mean, there would
be armored personnel vehicles,

you know, and

I mean, I, I remember
the word eradication was

the word that they
used the most back then.

They, they were hell-bent on
eradicating the cannabis plant.

It was like you were,

you were trying to be
a farmer in a war zone.

The interdiction efforts
by the DEA and CAMP

put a lot of pressure
on the community,

and so there's a lot
of community trauma

that's been, just layered

over the years.

Before I got to the
Emerald Triangle in 1993,

I had this vision of it being

this sort of dope-growing
peaceful utopia.

I didn't know the
reality of the place,

which was that

they were all carrying guns.

All these Back to
the Land hippies,

these guys were all armed.

Heavily armed in a lot of cases.

You know, listening
to The Grateful Dead

but packing an AR-15.

And then

there were the booby traps.

One of the jobs on the farm

was to check, maintain,
and install booby traps.

Okay.

And we visited a
couple other farms

to help string fishhooks on
fishing line about eye level

around cannabis patches.

They also were setting
small-game traps

and installing motion
sensors around the perimeter.

This was the era of CAMP
and Operation Green Sweep.

The DEA had made weed

a top priority in
the war on drugs.

So paranoia was running high.

Um, for those who don't
know, what was CAMP?

CA... CAMP stood for the
Campaign Against Marijuana Planting.

And it was a multi-agency task
force that was developed in 1982,

to eradicate
marijuana in California.

In the same Northern
California hills

where the giant redwoods
have grown for centuries

are now hidden patch after
patch of marijuana plants,

known here as Humboldt
Gold. America's most potent

and profitable variety
of the illegal drug.

This week, law enforcement authorities
have moved into Humboldt County

in a major raid to begin
chopping down and clearing out

the clandestine croplands.

The first time I
heard about CAMP

was when I saw
helicopters landing

in the meadow of the school,
where our kids went to school.

That was my first experience,

hearing that whomp, whomp,
whomp, whomp, whomp,

which is terrifying.

They shake the whole hillside.

They were in full combat
regalia with automatic rifles,

hanging off the side of
it, just staring back at me.

Sometimes the soldiers would
come down the rope ladders

and just demolish everything.

They would just go
from one farm to the next.

Your whole year could be wiped
out in the space of an afternoon,

and that's what
happened to a lot of people.

Welcome to the Emerald Triangle.

The war on drugs disturbs me.

It seems wrong to me that
the government can go to war

against its own citizens.

One drug agent
said using the military

to go after gardens planted
by a bunch of aging hippies

is like using a
Howitzer to kill a gnat.

You've got these people in armored
helicopter gunships, you know.

They're hanging out, you know, with
their automatic weapons, you know.

It's like don't hit a bump, you
know, and nail my wife and kids.

Some friends of mine were
chased out of their house

and across the meadow,

carrying their baby in
their arms, by a helicopter.

Their attitude has been
we can do anything we want.

If people happen
to live in an area

where marijuana is being
grown, they don't have rights.

I don't know what
motivated the camp officers

to dehumanize

a whole huge group of people.

Young families, with
children, with animals.

It's a mystery to me.

Um, when they work an operation,

we would have patches made.

"If you plant it, we will come,"

from the movie

the... with Kevin Costner.

Well, this is the patch
we used for one year.

CAMP was outstanding.

I had a lot of fun
working for CAMP.

Um... something new every
day. Something new every day.

We had no clue what
we were getting into,

but, for the most
part, yes, it was fun.

Dangerous, rewarding,

and exciting.

Real exciting.

They'd go up there, and
they'd be cowboys, man.

Yoo-hoo! Fly in their helicopters
like they were in Apocalypse Now

and come down and
cut it down and, like,

decimate the-the devil weed

and put the farmers
out of business

and then smoke their pot.

If you got caught,

you're fucking going
to jail for a long time.

So every little grow area
that I had in my patch,

a lot of the other guys too,

was handcrafted
amongst the manzanita

and the oak

so you couldn't see it.

And it was really hard work.

Back then, you had to carry
everything on your back.

You work all year long

and they just swoop in,
and they take all your labor,

own all your effort
and all your investment,

and you're fucked.

There's no money that year.

There's no, there's
no money for food.

There's no money for diapers.

There's no, there's no money.

After CAMP occurred,

prices of marijuana skyrocketed

because it had
been so eradicated.

So families became very
protective of who visited

their homesteads.

At one point, there was a
security store that opened in town.

As marijuana become
more and more,

valuable monetarily,

there was the risk of... of
someone stealing your crop.

I carry a gun
when I go up there,

because there's been
a lot of rip-offs around.

I was ripped off
last year up there.

And we have to have security
set up all over the garden

and somebody just
constantly watching it.

A real cultural sea-change
happened in the wake of CAMP.

It shattered the, the community,

in that almost all of my
initial community left.

Having that additional
constant stress,

that threat of, "Am
I gonna be busted,".

"Am I gonna be ripped off."

"Is somebody gonna lie to me,
is someone gonna set me up?"

And some people decide they
don't want to live that way any longer.

And the smart ones
took their proceeds

and, like, left the game behind.

But some people just got caught up
in it and didn't know when to get out.

You know, money...
money changes people.

Ownership, it
changes everything.

Because once you own something,

now you have to protect it.

So these hippies turned.

Some of them turned in the sense,
because now they had ownership,

and they had something to
lose and they had to protect it.

- Hello.
- Hi, is this.

Yes.

- Is...
- Could I come see you,

this afternoon, this
evening in Laytonville?

I could meet in about an hour.

I'm in... I'm close
to Ukiah right now.

Okay.

Which parking lot?

Boomer's?

- Okay. All right.
- Boomer's is a bar. I got you.

Tha-that was the piece of
information that was confusing me.

Okay. Parking lot
at Boomer's, at 5:00?

That's classic doper, right?

Fucking... Meet in the
fucking parking lot in a car.

You know, I've met
probably a dozen or more

old-time cannabis growers
from the Emerald Triangle

who are still
active in the area.

They're willing to sit
down and talk to me,

but there's no fucking way they
were ever gonna go on camera.

Not super-psyched on this
arrangement but I think that it's,

it's, it's worth
undertaking the risk, so...

Yeah. We'll go see what's up.

Yep.

My whole career as a journalist

has been built upon the fact

that, for reasons that I don't
care to examine too closely,

criminals feel very
comfortable with my presence,

and I feel very comfortable
around criminals.

I read to them as crooked,
as crooked as they are.

That's always been the
case, since I was very young.

A lot of the stories that
I reported and wrote,

I was chasing monsters in
the sense that... that I was,

you know, pursuing my own
demons that lived in my head.

I mean, fuck, the most,
the most famous story

that I ever reported and wrote
was called Stalking the Bogeyman,

which was about
destroying a real monster

that had done something
monstrous to me.

Well, it's no secret. I mean,
I-I've been very public with the fact

that I was sexually assaulted
when I was seven years old.

I didn't have any
sort of concept of sex

or rape or anything like that.

I just knew that
it hurt like hell.

What was he saying?

I don't remember
him saying anything.

Were you saying anything?

I don't think so. I
think I was just crying.

It's a pretty common
consequence of that

for, um... people
who are victimized

by childhood sexual assault

to come away from the experience

with a, shall we say, a
diminished sense of self-worth.

And that enabled me

to take risks
without a lot of fear.

Come on.

Just leave it. Quit
fucking with it.

Rolling around with a, just
with a digital recorder going

and with a hidden camera,

you get a much more
authentic representation.

I was up with a old-time grower.

She told me a story
about these guys from LA,

you know, and they got
killed and buried up there.

And she said, like, one of her dogs
went out and found their boots one day.

Holy fucking shit!

I mean, this is a place
where overt racism

is as widespread

as it is anywhere in the
country, including the deep South.

Okay?

And that was, if anything,
even more the case in 1993

when these three guys from
Mexico were supposedly killed.

I met this guy named Juan
who was from Sinaloa in Mexico,

and Juan was one of about a
half a dozen cannabis growers

that are, subleasing
land to grow weed on.

They would all talk to me.

They would all be cool
with my taking notes.

But as soon as I brought up the
idea of doing an interview on camera,

it was like, fuck, no.

And I understand why.

If they get busted, like, their
families in Mexico don't eat.

They're vulnerable. I mean,
they're, they're outsiders.

If Juan just disappears
off the face of the Earth,

I mean, his, his family
is not even gonna know

where to start looking for him, let
alone where to point law enforcement.

Like the guys that
allegedly got killed in 1993.

Up here, they put
on this wonderful.

"We're enlightened,
we're spiritual."

No. This is
en-whitenment up here.

The tension between
Latino people

and white people in
Northern California is huge.

There's a lot of
hatred and bad vibes

and a lot of racism.

Very much.

These towns are
actually more or less,

believe it or not, separated.

Starting in the '80s,

the farmers in the
Emerald Triangle hired

Mexican laborers, the
same as fruit growers

in Central Valley in California.

You know, these immigrants
came into this environment

highly motivated to, like, try

to carve something out,
to make some money,

to send it back to their
family at home, right?

To make ends meet. These are
hardworking brothers and sisters, man.

I mean, I've had the experience
of working on an organic farm

and I worked with, three guys,

two of them from Guatemala
and one of them from El Salvador,

and they worked me
under the table, dude.

And they were 20 years older
than I was at the time, man!

Those guys were tough.

Those guys were just
trying to make a buck,

try to send some money
home or survive in this country,

and I can't fault them for that.

I just can't do it.

Fair to say that criticism
of CAMP represented

misunderstanding of what a
dangerous business it was?

It, it seemed in the beginning

of the, CAMP seasons,

some of the growers were local
people, entrepreneurs if you will,

trying to make a buck.

And the perception of
some of the public was that

the marijuana growers and the
marijuana business in general

were, love child, hippie
type of operations,

nothing to worry about,
no danger involved.

In '92 and '93, where we began
to see more of the violence,

the weaponry, the booby traps,

we, you know, knew now that we were
up against something a little different.

We've had wire, barbed wire.

We've, had one with
a bear trap on the trail.

They're protecting their sites

whether it's fishhooks
hanging from leaders,

buried shotgun shells,
and you name what else.

When the gold fields
of California opened up,

it wasn't the best and brightest
that came to pan for gold.

It was, like, people trying to extricate
a high profit for a little amount of work.

The same thing happened
growing cannabis.

And some of us
become bad actors.

You know, you get held
hostage, you get tortured,

you pick up a drug habit,

or you do a little bit of time.

You go back up there,
you're not the same anymore.

A lot of harder drugs
started coming in,

and you had people
up there that were

probably high on cocaine or
amphetamine or heroin constantly.

People started building
sheds or bunkers underground

and grew more and
more marijuana indoors.

My near neighbor, once
he retreated into his bunker,

he started doing either
cocaine or amphetamines

to keep himself
awake to, to guard it all.

So he would sit there
watching his money pile up,

but he could never spend it

'cause, 'cause he couldn't leave

and eventually, I don't
know how many years later,

he just died there
of a heart attack.

You know, the guys
in the backwoods

they get isolated, right?

And you get kinda desocialized.

You, like, become like
an undomesticated animal.

And you come in to town

and it's loud and it's
bright and there are rules.

And I have friends that, like,
literally disappeared into the woods,

that just became feral.

And that kind of environment,
when you're that isolated

it's very easy to enter
another kind of mental realm.

I mean, someone doesn't have
to be an amphetamine addict

to have been out in the
woods maybe too long

and been traumatized
by being out there

and fearing for their lives.

I feel like all the Sasquatch
stories I ever heard

emanates from that
traumatic feeling of, like,

"I might not belong here, and
something is gonna take me out."

In the Fall of 1993,

I totally believed

that those guys that
came to the cabin

were convinced that there was

a... omnipresent threat.

And one was them
was traumatized.

He was like, "No! It
wasn't a fucking rip-off.

All the weed's still there."

Typical marijuana
patch at that time,

at that time of the year,
we're talking about, you know,

$200,000 to $300,000
worth of, worth of weed,

you know, was
there for the taking.

And by this guy's account,

whoever killed these three
guys didn't take the weed.

So it wasn't a rip-off.
It was just, you know...

The plants were all torn up,

but they were just
left strewn about.

Now, the other thing
that I would later figure out

is that he was on crystal meth.

Like, and that a lot of the
people I'd been meeting

during the last couple
days were tweakers.

I just hadn't any
experience, you know,

with the toothless and
ruthless up to that point.

I would love to find the guys
that came to the cabin that night,

but I think there's a high likelihood
that those two guys are dead.

Um, tweakers don't
have a long shelf life.

The guy goes out the
door still, like, ranting about

how the fact that they got
to warn everybody up there.

The guy that owns
the place sits down,

and he goes, "Well, that
was pretty fucking weird."

And we all just started
laughing, you know.

I mean, it was like a release
of tension kind of laughter,

but we all just
busted up laughing.

And then we didn't say
anything more about it.

I reached out to a
confidential source.

He absolutely refused
to go on camera

and has really good reasons
for not going on camera.

He's turned his life
around, he's gotten clean.

He got out of the dope game.

He wanted to meet with
me in person at a restaurant.

We were there for hours with
these retired weed growers,

you know, drinking wine, eating.

He's sitting across
from me, and, you know,

I'm not getting
anything from this guy.

Until the restaurant closes down
and all the other patrons leave

and it's just our table.

He sorta like leans
into me, and he's like,

"I hear that you're looking
into those three Mexican guys

that greased back in '93."

And he says, "Wow, man,
that's, that's pretty heavy."

That's a poker face moment.

So, in the moment,

on the inside, I'm like, "Fuck!"

On the outside, I'm like,

"Yeah, that's what
I'm doing. Okay."

The way that this source
came across with the name was

as if it was common knowledge,

at least in this
social gathering.

And, he tells me that

worked on a farm that was
owned by the Hells Angels.

And now that jibed
with other information

that I had been told about
what was going on in Spy Rock

in the 1990s is that the
Hells Angels had set up shop

around Spy Rock Road.

So, again, it's another one
of those pieces of information

that... kinda rises to the top.

It fits.

Hey, man, let me
ask you something,

I mean, regarding.

Do you think he poses any sort
of threat to my personal safety?

I mean, look, with these
kinds of investigations,

I'm still alive because I do a
constant risk analysis, okay.

And my risk analysis in
regards to this individual is

don't put his name out in the
public, it's not worth the risk.

As far as I'm concerned,
he's alleged killer only,

and alleged killer
he will remain.

Yeah, I don't wanna.

- Okay.
- Yeah.

Um.

Okay.

Yeah, I don't wanna... I just

I wanna avoid
talking about that guy.

Avoid talking about?

- Yeah.
- Okay. Um.

He's got long hair,

and he, um, wears a
leather jacket with patches,

a couple affiliation
patches on it.

He's got a big pickup truck.

Looks like any one of a number
of other deadheads, I don't know.

He's a hyper guy.
He's a high-strung guy.

He's a curious character.
He was a good neighbor.

And he was very, very nice.

You know, a few years ago,

there was a murder on Spy Rock,

and it was a, it was a
guy from another country.

And he got dumped
along the side of the road.

And the police
swarmed the whole area.

And they harassed.

And I know he's
one of the few people

that stuck in there with
lawyers and fought for his rights.

And I know he got
all his guns back.

So what was the murder where
he was harassed by the cops?

That's the one that
happened way later

where they found the
one dead foreigner guy,

and he was a trimmigrant.

He was an outside guy.

And they found him literally
in a ditch up there by the road.

And then the cops
got pissed and came...

That was when they
came up Spy Rock.

And that was way later than
when you're talking about.

December 2013,

Hugo was working as a guard

and garden tender
at a dope plot.

He was apparently
asleep in his tent,

and someone murdered
him by firing a shotgun

through the wall of the tent.

The cops got on to the murder
because a family member

called the Mendocino
County Sheriff's Office

and said that they were hearing

from multiple associates

that Hugo, had been killed

and gave the cops the location.

Well, we really wanna meet.

We're gonna try and figure
out a way to get to him.

There's gotta be
a way, and I will try

a backhanded way

to do that.

Right?

Um,

I got, I got a back...

A Hells Angel affiliate, I know.

I'm gonna call him.

He may know how to
get his phone number.

And I'll call him up.
I'll call him up tonight.

Great. That'd be great.

Hey, is this?