Sasquatch

Okay.

Should I just go?

Monsters aren't born, they're made, we make them.

All of our monsters are human-made.

The... We make them out of the things we're afraid of,

we make them out of the things we hate.

In our past, we, we became fearful as an evolutionary mechanism

for survival.

Don't go in the cave. It's dark.

There could be something in there that will eat you.

It's a human coping mechanism.

This notion of things that are out of control,

things that we can't control.

It just seems to be hardwired into the human psyche.

Did, did kinda tell you why I was calling?

He mentioned that,

you know, that you'd be a good guy to talk to

about kinda Spy Rock and Mendo and the scene.

A confidential source told me

that in 1993

word on the mountain was that

had a hand in the murders

of three farm workers from Mexico

at a dope patch off Spy Rock Road.

Subsequent to that,

Ghostdance told me that was pulled in for questioning

by the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office

regarding a different murder at a dope farm

off Spy Rock Road that occurred in 2013.

How long have... Are you still based, like...

Are you still based in, in Mendo now?

Yeah, how... When did you first get there, man?

Would it... Would Spy Rock be a dangerous place

for my crew and I to just, like, go and start trying to get interviews

came across to me

like somebody who's experienced with handling interrogations.

Somebody that knew how to issue a veiled threat.

Okay, let me ask you one more,

one more thing, man. I mean, one of the stories,

one of the stories I heard when I was working at that farm

was about a, a triple homicide

around Spy Rock Road in October or November of 1993

where one version of the story is that

an actual Sasquatch did it.

Do you know anything about that?

Okay.

All right, man. Well...

Just got out of a meeting with a source on Spy Rock

and, um, dealing with all these dopers up here,

it's, it's such a nest of vipers.

It's hard to know what to believe or how to gauge the truth.

One quality I'm looking for is, consistency of information.

There are certain things that keep coming up

Three guys from Mexico, Hells Angels.

From sources in different towns, from different generations.

These common threads keep coming up.

Now, twice in the last 72 hours,

from two different individuals, I've heard that, yes,

three men were murdered on Spy Rock in the fall of 1993.

And they were murdered on orders from a powerful grower

up here on Spy Rock.

The, first source says the guys had gotten killed

because they had gotten a local girl strung out

on heroin and meth.

The source today just said, you know, quote,

you know, "They, they fucked with the wrong guy's daughter,

and it got 'em killed."

So that's just another angle to explore

and keep an eye and ear out for.

Thanks for agreeing to do this, man.

I appreciate it.

So I met with this Mendocino County investigator

who is only willing to talk to us if his identity is protected,

because... he's got a contract out on his life

because he killed a cartel operative in a shootout.

I asked you when we met I wanted to make sure about a guy named.

Okay.

I wasn't there when these events took place,

but from people I knew there,

they told me the story

that probably one of the first people here

to run a bigger operation

was a guy they called Bigfoot

who was up on Spy Rock.

A legendary guy.

- Interesting. - Yeah.

Had all his family riding around in off-road vehicles

with, you know, had football fields of pot.

He was the legendary big man on the mountain.

So there was a common terminology,

anything that went awry, "Bigfoot did it."

I'm realizing that

if was involved in the triple homicide

up on Spy Rock in the fall of 1993,

one possibility is that

he was following orders or acting on behest

of somebody or maybe just trying to curry favor

with someone much higher up the food chain.

By reputation, would Bigfoot have been the kind of guy

that would get somebody else to do a killing for him?

I... Once again, I don't know,

but that's not at all what I got from the people there was,

it was totally copacetic,

but it was like, don't come up here and mess with us.

I was thinking back to that night in the cabin in 1993,

and did I hear them say

"a" Bigfoot killed those guys,

or did I hear them say Bigfoot killed those guys?

Because memory's tricky like that

and I-I-I.

I don't know.

Could they have said, "I'm telling you, Bigfoot killed those guys"?

Yeah, maybe.

Maybe.

So, have you ever heard of an old-time grower

who also had property on Spy Rock in the early 1990s

who goes by the nickname Bigfoot?

When I lay this story on this cop

about an old-time grower on Spy Rock

known or nicknamed as Bigfoot,

without missing a beat he's like, "That sounds like Bigfoot Gary."

Um...

Right now, there are snitches

in and around Laytonville, California,

who are asking around on my behalf

about, about Bigfoot Gary,

about Hells Angels, about murders.

One thing that would make me feel a lot better

is if I were able to find somebody

that put and Bigfoot Gary together.

If I find somebody, whether cop or crook,

that says, "Hey, yeah, when was a young guy in the early '90s.

He worked for Bigfoot Gary."

Fuck, man, that would be huge.

One other thing I would really like to know is

why they pulled in

and searched his property

in relation to the 2013 murder

of Hugo Olea-Lopez.

Okay? Why did they key in on him?

Did they actually think that he had anything to do with it?

I'd really like to know that.

There is some parallels between his murder

and the original case in 1993,

in that he was a Mexican national

on Spy Rock Road.

And in both cases,

you know, there were harvested plants cut down but not stolen.

So it didn't look like a rip-off.

Granted there's no indication that a Sasquatch did it

but you strip that away, and there's a lot of similarities.

Okay.

David?

- Hey, how are you? - Good. Thanks.

- Nice to see you. - Likewise.

- Come on in. - Welcome to.

Okay. Thanks.

I came in in the fall of '13

after this case had kind of slowed down

and the next group of cases came in, as they always do.

I've been in communication with the family

I began to get in communication in '14

when I started to follow up on the case.

I was the only Spanish-speaking detective at the time,

so when she would call, I'd be the one that would talk to her.

Um... and that's his wife.

And, you know, we've talked a bunch, and she had some information she provided.

There's obviously some suspicions of, of close contacts with him,

but there was never any, any ability

to tie anybody down to anything.

I think so. I think that's how it played out.

There was no discovery of his, death.

There was, "This is where he's at, and he's dead."

And then they go up and they discovered him in a tent.

If you know Spy Rock, I mean, you're so far out there,

you gotta know where you're going.

We don't randomly fall on a tent.

So whatever it was, it was a target,

because it wasn't like that was the only doper around.

There were other ones in the area.

- He was targeted. - It had to have been.

Um...

How hard is it for you to investigate a homicide

when the victim is from... is an undocumented, you know, worker...

It's difficult.

With the growers' cases where you have Hispanic workers,

it's extremely difficult.

We thought there are more bodies than we could even count right now

up in the hills.

Lot of unreported murders?

I'm sure there are.

And a lot of unsolveds. It's pretty bad.

And it's not because we're not trying. It's because we don't have

that cooperation from the community, a lot of them.

Especially with marijuana growers, you know,

who's going to be willing to talk to us.

How are the Mexican immigrants

perceived in Mendocino?

What's like the level of just out-and-out racism

in Mendocino County?