In 1967, what appeared to be the corpse of a bigfoot was displayed in a carnival exhibit. When the "Minnesota Iceman" (as it became known) came to the attention of Ivan T. Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans, the two headeds to Minnesota to see the corpse. The body was in a block of ice and kept in a refrigerated coffin. The body was 6 feet tall, covered in dark brown hair, and seemed to have been shot in the eye. Some of the flesh had been exposed where some of the ice had melted, which smelled like it was rotting. Sanderson and Heuvelmans thought it was real, and Heuvelmans proposed the name Homo pongoides.
The story given by Frank Hansen, who had been displaying it, was that Russian seal hunters had found it in a block of ice. A Californian millionaire had then bought it in Hong Kong and rented it to Hansen. Heuvelmans suggested that it might have killed in Vietnam and then taken to the US in a body bag.
The Smithsonian tried to obtain it, but Hansen would not reveal the millionaire's name, and would not let the Smithsonian take it to examine the body. Eventually the Iceman was replaced with a model. Reportedly, Howard Ball had been comissioned by Hansen to make a similar creature before the Iceman was displayed. Hansen said that he never used Ball's model.
It seems likely that the Minnesota Iceman was a fake. If it was real, why wouldn't Hansen or the millionaire allow the Smithsonian to examine it? After all, a Bigfoot corpse would be the one of the biggest scientific finds ever. The dissapearence of the Iceman, and it's replacement with a model also makes the Iceman more circumspect.
